Shock to Shanti, page 9
A few hours later Ansh and Reya open the door quietly, their small feet quickly patter across the floor. They squeeze their little bodies into narrow gaps of space on the bed. Manish was right. They were just resting longer than usual.
Reya sleeps next to me, her featherweight leg on me, her big eyes looking into mine, bestowing me with a sleepy smile. Her pyjamas are twisted and her shirt is above her belly. She isn’t quite ready to start the day, but also shows no interest in returning to her room. I pull her closer and kiss her forehead. She in turn wraps her twig-like arms around me. It’s not often that I have the luxury to embrace her and look into her eyes without the fear of being late for an activity.
My parents rarely displayed physical affection with each other or with us. It wasn’t out of negligence or as an act of punishment. It just was. Once, we asked for an explanation. How could it be that our friends had no qualms embracing their parents; yet we kept a comfortable distance and nodded our head for an emotional connection? Hugging, kissing, and saying ‘I love you’ was for Westerners, they responded. I didn’t carry their conviction. In fact, I strongly disagreed and vowed to be extra mushy to my children. So when Ansh was born, I kept my promise. After Reya came along my thoughts oscillated wildly between giving them up for adoption from sheer exhaustion to shielding them from the cruel world by holding them tightly. As long as I wasn’t fatigued, the household remained heavily affectionate.
But the older and more able my children became, the less time I dedicated to the simple act of holding. The days were packed with what I felt were necessities for their growth: following rules and grasping new concepts. While I didn’t want their lives to be jam-packed at a young age, I felt compelled to fill their space and time with what I thought would help them grow into happy, successful and independent adults.
This required piano lessons to improve their intellectual development.
They needed soccer and swimming to balance education and sports.
And to solidify their social skills, play dates were scheduled like meetings.
The children’s daily calendar was full enough that being a mother became robotic, that in order to complete a list of tasks I had to become a machine.
Removing a few activities from their schedule seemed more like parental laziness than providing the children with empty space to grow. There was a clear disconnect between what I wished motherhood to be and what I made of it.
I engaged in actions I didn’t fundamentally support because I fell prey to parents’ behaviours and actions around me. If I sat back and allowed Ansh and Reya to be children, to give them time to daydream and be bored, they would fall off the last rung of the ladder. Their common core exam results would have caused teachers to be fired.
Ansh jumps on Manish, hugs him tight, tumbles next to him and falls asleep in less than a minute. He knows that I can no longer handle his sixty-five pound bodyweight.
We lay on the bed for a while as the kids rub their sleep away and go from zero-to-sixty in a few minutes.
We massage their small backs and arms as they speak without pausing to breathe. My hand covers more than half of Reya’s back. It’s surprising how fragile she feels.
‘I have a pink piano in my other house, the big house far away. The house with five levels of stairs,’ Reya states with confidence. She has an intense amount of love for stairs and the colour pink. Reya lived in a one-level apartment with neutral colours her entire life, so stairs in a pink house is her ultimate fantasy.
Ansh graciously waits till his little sister runs out of steam then starts his presentation.
‘Mama, I need a girlfriend right now. Can you get her for me? I will take her on the E train, or even the C train if she wants (the ultimate sacrifice for Ansh) but I want a girlfriend and she has to be seven.’ I’m used to Ansh’s train-obsessed conversations, which ones are too dirty and which ones have his seal of approval. However a girl on a train with him is new. He’s eight and he needs a girlfriend?
Ansh and Reya go on for fifteen minutes, speaking one after another then on top of each other. It’s on these rare occasions I realize the profound impact they have on my life. I enjoy the innocence and energy they bring to every conversation. They speak their mind without the worry of being ridiculed or shut down. I admire the simplicity by which they live; not yet interested in material possessions or status. And how easily they expose their love, without a care about feeling rejection. They are my reminder to resist the cynical world of adulthood. They bring out the decency in me.
Their topics oscillate wildly and I never know which direction the next conversation will steer towards—as of now they’re trying to outshine one another with their knowledge of photosynthesis.
I’ve observed with each passing year that I contribute less and less to their school discussions. They are at an age where their mind acts like a sponge—they easily collect and retain data provided at school. Learning is fun; and bestowing their vast knowledge on us on weekends is their way of giving back. I’ve taken a sabbatical from learning, my sponge is old and leaking, but I find it gratifying to hear my children sound intelligent.
I rarely feel lucky. I am on most occasions the woman who sees a glass half empty. Many a time I have gone on my soapbox—detailing my bad breaks to the family. So much so that I have been labelled a drama queen. But a sleepy Saturday morning with the children next to me is all I need for the negativity to disappear.
Eventually I drag myself out of bed, but Ansh uses a martial arts technique he learned to pull me back. I topple on top of him, a bit startled and impressed with his strength.
‘I love you, Mama,’ he whispers with two kisses.
‘I love you too,’ from Reya with another kiss.
They hug Manish and me tightly with their miniature bodies. I want to pause this frame, hold on to this moment because they are growing fast and soon our bed will be uncool and so will we. They will have their own lives and I will be searching for memories like this.
‘Can I brush your hair, Mama?’ Reya asks.
‘Can I massage your head?’ Ansh asks.
They pull and slap and brush my hair and ask if it feels good. It does. They almost fight, give me a wicked smile, and then split my hair exactly in half to make it fair. They transform into beauticians, putting some of my hair in a braid, some in a ponytail, and the rest stranded.
‘Mine is better, right?’ asks Reya.
‘No mama, mine is better,’ states Ansh.
They are satisfied with their salon services and want to make us smile again. Ansh ushers Manish and me to their room and guides us to his bed, then runs and sits on the piano bench.
He curls his fingers, places them on the keys and proceeds to give us a stern look. We are told to be silent as if a concert is commencing at Carnegie Hall. After Reya finally stops giggling at his demands, Ansh begins to glide his hands on the keys, playing Für Elise with all the precision he can muster. Learning to play piano was an unfulfilled dream of mine and to hear Ansh play a Beethoven composition, watching both of his hands at work while he reads the notes, makes me feel proud and tearful.
Ansh finishes and looks at his audience for approval.
‘Did you like it?’ He already knows the answer.
I hug them both, see the time glaring at me, and ruefully begin the day.
Their tiny feet patter behind me, two Mini-Mes that have more stories to share.
CHANGE
Last week Manish and I had a full-blown fight. It started with an innocuous discussion about fair distribution of labour in the house. I believed it was necessary to take a business-like approach to divvy our tasks. As I saw it, the burden of our domestic work was carried by me. It had to be remedied quickly lest it became the accepted norm. My treat for Manish if he agreed to help create and implement an evenly distributed workload was a significant reduction in nagging; although I let the term ‘significant’ remain ambiguous.
Just the possibility of less badgering had Manish fully dedicated to the conversation and actively participating until his blackberry started vibrating. That was the end of our civilized discussion.
‘It’s work—an emergency.’
He may have invoked sympathy from me had I not heard this line repeatedly for a decade.
‘I have to jump on a call.’
He sprinted to another room as if the grim reaper was after him. My blood boiled. It felt like watching reruns of a bad movie. While he disappeared to dissect the crisis, I juggled the kids and housework. He eventually emerged like a champion, all smiles. He wasn’t, however, getting any appreciation from me.
After witnessing my unhappy state, he tried to make amends by kick-starting our previous conversation. In response I gave him the silent treatment. He tried again. After all our years together he didn’t understand that conflict resolution is not my strong suit while I’m angry.
To my amazement, I remained collected for a full five minutes before the storm raged in. Then the gloves came off. My mouth threw punches without any thought.
‘It’s your family’s fault,’ I said with tears in my eyes. Manish looked confused, trying to make a connection between his family and a blackberry ringing non-stop.
‘Your parents were so selfish. It’s no surprise you only care about yourself.’ Without fail when I drag his family into a fight, I stop breathing. I resort to snorting. But I continued speaking. Manish became more confused, wondering why I couldn’t breathe.
‘You’re maligning my family and me, yet you’re angry and gasping for air. Am I missing something?’ he asked.
I stopped for one breath, snorted, and then resumed with my retaliation by pointing out how most of his actions, or inactions to be more precise, caused us much pain.
I stuck to this topic for much too long, dissecting how my life took a drastic turn for the worse after having to interact with his emotionally unstable family. Manish remained silent throughout my full soliloquy, but that only fuelled my anger. I couldn’t deduce if it was punishment, indifference, or that he didn’t want to add more drama to the fight.
At that point I forgot what the goal of the discussion was and felt it was more beneficial to end our conversation, but not without throwing a last jab, ‘You’re so self-serving.’
After a fight like that it would’ve been nice to own a sprawling ranch, to run to another wing and lick my wounds in solitude. Instead we had to make do with a small apartment, where the kids occupied one room. So we both quietly sat on our designated sides of the bed, in our room, and glared at anything but each other. We refused to break the silence in any way, paranoid that any trigger may cause one or both of us to enter the dark side. We were exhausted from the fighting. How do Ansh and Reya punch, beat, and yell at each other every day and come out unscathed?
After an hour of successfully ignoring each other we realized it would be in our best interest to behave like adults. We started slowly, as if we were on our first date, carefully testing the water until we felt comfortable. Mimicking a lifetime movie, we spoke of our overwhelming lives and how we’d simplify it together. We made a pact that it would start from that very night.
It has been two weeks since our discussion and Manish and I are in fact enacting on a few promises. Manish completes tasks off my list as well as his own without any hoopla. He loads the dishwasher and has become a top-class sous chef. Although he loathes cooking, chopping all the ingredients has become therapeutic for him. Manish watches back episodes of UFC—The Ultimate Fighter while chopping onions and tomatoes. I don’t complain. And as promised, I cut down on the nagging.
This can’t possibly be true. Manish leaving his work aside to chop vegetables. I am not a gambler. But I predict this cooperation will die quickly and shamelessly. And just as I finish this thought, Manish’s phone rings.
Surprise!
He needs to deal with an emergency at work. I feel a twinge of malice as he walks to an empty room on a weekend afternoon to troubleshoot the issue. I remind myself this is bound to happen time-to-time. It’s okay. It’ll finish soon.
I quickly dress the children and we head downstairs to the garden patio, where a social event for our building is in full swing. Although the outdoor patio is not extensive, the large rhododendrons and bamboo plants outlining the perimeter makes the area look like a luscious garden.
Residents are nibbling on shards of cheese and sipping wine provided by the building management.
Ansh and Reya run to the snacks table like they haven’t seen food in days, start eating crackers straight from the trays and discuss their day at school with whomever is standing near them. Occasionally one of the kids wanders over and attempts to pull me into the crowd. I say no politely. I’m distracted watching them act like adults. However, I quickly walk over when they ask someone for red ‘juice’.
I roll my eyes and smile at the elderly man they tried to con. It’s surprising that we never met, as this building is rather small, a boutique. He introduces himself and provides some background on himself and his family. It only takes a few minutes to notice that behind the idle chat is a special disarming quality about him. As the gathering continues, he moves around the patio, warmly greeting other residents. As he is about to exit through the sliding doors, I run to block his path. I’m not letting him disappear through the glass doors. I may never see him again. I need more time to unwrap the enigma, so I invite him to join us for tea upstairs. He kindly obliges.
Manish is out of his work cave when we enter and joins us. We continue on our couch in the living room with light conversation about our families and livelihood when it hits me what is emanating from him, what I couldn’t determine earlier. He has an aura that exudes serenity. He is a small man but big enough to bring a sense of calm to our entire apartment. It’s odd that a man I’ve known for an hour could affect me in such a positive manner. Who is he? What does he do?
He puts his teacup down, eases his small frame into the couch and proceeds to talk about his life, like a grandfather telling a story. Manish and I adjust to sit closer to him like little schoolchildren. His life was not extraordinary, he informs us, just another immigrant doctor who came to New York in search of success. And he found it—via working eighty-hour weeks.
He had a family to support and although he made plenty of money, it wasn’t enough. So he kept with his difficult hours, never really perfecting the work–life balance, but never giving it a shot either.
‘This isn’t sustainable—no matter how capable you feel yourself to be. Something always has to give.’ And it did for him—a heart attack. Then he needed a pacemaker. And that forced him into early retirement.
He continued to have responsibilities but there was a mandate to slow down. He learned a new occupation to maintain a substantial income but simultaneously provide flexible hours. But most importantly, he had to decelerate mentally; and that didn’t come as easily. After undergoing eight years of introspection and meditation he tells us it’s still a work of progress. Eight years and counting!
He lifts himself from the couch with a warm smile, wishes us a good evening and let’s himself out.
Wow, I want his calm and apparent contentment. But I don’t want to work for it. Couldn’t he present a quick fix like: ‘Take the blue pill once a day for three months.’
In a day and age where there is medication for every ailment and answers to every question at the touch of a button, his answer is not easy to accept. Neither do I have the luxury nor the inclination for an eight-year journey to find myself. But I’m ready for balance and—change …
Subtle the rush of heaven
came to tantalize me,
Sweet the kiss of petals
surely I succumb to thee
The rays pour out like wine
and I take what is mine…
Clear It
In high school, being popular was not the be-all of my happiness. If it were, I would’ve been one depressed teenager.
I was ten when our family moved from one Pittsburgh suburb to another; and my sister and I christened our new elementary school with minorities. We realized quickly that kids don’t always react kindly to differences. When they heard we were Indians with polysyllabic names, they assumed we were from a tribe and should have feathers on our head. Some would run around in a circle, putting their hands on their mouth, chanting ‘Ah ah ah ah’. And my name, it was uncommon enough that teachers would stop and stare at me while attempting the pronunciation. When the words finally stumbled out of their mouth my name sounded more like Arachne. Granted there are many common letters, but no, I was not a reincarnated Greek mythology character who turned into a spider. Occasionally a few classmates would considerately call me Pocahontas, and why not? She was an Indian, as was I. That we were two versions of Indian seemed superfluous.
As high school approached, most of my classmates grew out of the name-calling phase. I was elated they seldom asked me about my feathers. Only occasionally did I hear lines like:
‘Hey Arachne, why don’t you dance with your headdress?’
My life mainly went back to being dull and predictable; for me, this was as satisfying as being popular.
It would’ve been nice if I kept this mindset into my adulthood. But I didn’t. Long after my high school and college years passed; sometime in the thick of acquiring my master’s degree and working full time, I had an epiphany to be the cool girl I never was in my younger years. Some found the notion of being popular all consuming in their pre-teen years, while I caught up to that phenomenon in my late twenties. And so my quest began in the heart of Chicago, where I pushed lower priority items like working and finishing my master’s degree further down the list. Instead, weekends were for mingling. A nice evening at Le Colonial, a French Vietnamese restaurant, where they had a small seating area upstairs with comfortable couches and strong drinks. It started slow and steady with friends from work and school; then it eventually expanded to include friends of friends who knew my friends.
