I had to reach there well in advance to book a spot for
myself. A lot of folks had already gathered at the Boylston St. I wanted to be there for my mom.
Boston – This is the city I grew up in and having lived here
all the 16 years of my life, the city had become one of my good friends. I am a second-generation
American-Indian and I have been brought up
being lectured about the Indian family values and how I should be well knit with
the family. This would mean I wouldn’t get to move out once I reached college too.
Both my dad and mom hail from Calcutta. Well, my mom is from Calcutta, but my
dad is from somewhere around there. Both are true blood Bengalis. I can barely
speak a few words of Bengali, but I do understand it quite a bit. My mom says I
used to be fluent, but then I was too lazy to continue learning the language.
They had decided way earlier that our lives will be lived here in the states
and did not force me to learn my mother tongue. Someday I would like to though.
I like the Bengali songs that mom keeps playing.
I remember my mom being this sad soul. That’s one of my first
impressions of her. We were never a great mother-daughter combo. I somehow feel
I have all her traits. At least I have inherited the writing genes from her.
She would be home all the time doing pretty much nothing but taking care of me.
I seldom got to spend time with my father, except for when we were travelling.
He would buy me whatever I wanted though. I guess that’s the trade one gets. Things
changed when I was 12. I was in my 7th Grade when I accidently
pounced upon my mom’s journals. I was searching for something in the dresser
and came across an old notebook. I couldn’t keep bounds on my curiosity and
ended up reading it. I was sure that it was going to be a sad love story which
had turned her into this melancholic robot. But what I read in those few pages
was a woman’s tale. Many a woman’s tale, may be…
1999
I had made up my mind
with much difficulty that this is a good thing. It’s every other Indian girl’s
dream. To make it to a land far away from the choking land of idols and devils.
To America – where dreams become reality. Where liberation found it’s true
meaning. It wasn’t that my Bachelor of Arts in History was going to make me a high-flying
journalist. But that’s one of the trains that I did not take, so I wouldn’t
know if I would have reached anywhere. I was forced into another train where I
was married off to a software engineer working in IBM. I got married between my
semester holidays during my masters. It was supposedly too good a ‘Samparka’ to
let go. And my ageing dad wanted to hold his head high in the society. The same
society which would have looked down upon him if he remarried after my mom
passed away young. He used the single dad blackmail pretty well.
Sujoy was a good guy. But
we had nothing great going. Even before I finished my masters, Sujoy got an
opportunity to travel to Seattle. He decided to take it up even though he knew
I wanted to take up journalism once I finished my masters. He said he will not force me to join him,
but he said he can’t let go of the opportunity. He said he will “allow” me to
complete my masters and join him later. Once I finished my masters I had two
choices – Be the family woman and go make a home in the United States or aspire
to have my articles published on The telegraph.
I liked the rains in
Seattle. They reminded me of my home, the poetries about rain, the songs of
rain. I kept telling myself that I should start writing seriously. But I ended up
puking out all my frustrations into my journals and used them for my fire place.
This one has survived so far. Maybe, I even asked Sujoy to steal one of the
computers from his office. Why do they need so many anyways? All I did during
the day was to stare out of the balcony into the woods. Luckily the balcony was
facing the woods and not the other apartments. I could see the other apartments
though from my living room window. The ladies gang used to get together exactly at 11, on a bench. Two of them carried the children and the other one was young. Maybe
she was pulled out of her Master degree too. Sujoy would come back from work,
have his tea, change to shorts and get out again to play volleyball. Most of
the crowd were South Indians. Sujoy used to take me to house parties where the
women cooked and the men would drink. There would be a meet up to plan the
dishes the men would like to have while they booze. Sadly, there was no fish
cooked any time.
Every week the women used
to get together for potluck. I went to a couple of them, but I couldn’t relate
to any of the ladies. Most of the conversations surrounded their
husbands and more importantly their in-laws. Nothing too wrong about them, but
there was this one time I referred to Rabindrananth da and a lady asked me if
that’s the guy who wrote Janaganamana. I don’t get offended very easily, but
when someone poked around my Tagorism, I flipped. He is my faith. I decided
that day that I wouldn’t go to another potluck. That lasted for 2 days. Sujoy
couldn’t leave his reputation for my discomfort.
My days would stretch
so long that I could fit years into them. I would be up by 6 to make breakfast
and lunch so that Sujoy could carry it. I hated it when the clock struck 8. There would be so much silence in the house that I could hear the
trucks running on the highway. I tried listening to the CDs I had, but getting
new ones was difficult. I resorted to the radio and eventually started liking
it quite a bit. There were so many talk shows where they discussed their
miseries. Felt good,, actually. My fear of roads didn’t help me either. I was
so adamant that I wouldn’t learn driving. I found a library a few miles away
and brought in some courage to walk to it. I had to return half way through
since the pedestrian walkway ended. I stood in an island which had a no
pedestrian crossing sign. I wish I had wings. Maybe they got chopped off when I
boarded the plane from Calcutta. I so badly wanted to go back to India and live
there for a while. But the flight tickets were too expensive and moreover my
going away would mean that Sujoy would struggle for food. All he has cooked in
his life was Maggie. This one time, I almost tore apart the dependent visa page
from my passport. The “H4 housewife” tag was weighing heavily on me.
I tried the shopkeeper
jobs too! But the negativity around there made me feel more depressed and that
didn’t last too long. By the time I had spent 2 months in the job, there were 4
different ladies who worked alongside me at the counter. There was one thing that
connected them - the complaining! I should’ve taken them to the slums of Calcutta.
I finally told Sujoy that I will do another Masters degree in the US. But it wasn’t to
be..
2000
Dia came as a great
relief. I must be a horrible mom to say this, but her arrival gave me good
‘timepass’. I now had her to attend to. Since Sujoy’s parents were sick, I was
left to figure out how to take care of a baby by myself. It was fun though. She
would make me laugh and cry at the same time. I used to sing Rabindra geet for
her. It at least put her to sleep. I would wake up and sleep with her. I could
see a lot of changes in Sujoy once Dia was born. He would never let me get up
in the night, if dia started crying. He used to pamper her like crazy. Once
Papa came home, Dia wouldn’t bother even looking at me. But outside the house,
it was a different story. Once we were in public, it was understood that Dia is
my responsibility. Of course, I am not going to write here about all the
maddening fights we have had on why he couldn’t attend to her more. I sometimes
wished that I was like one of those girls on the bench. Everytime I hear them
speak, they spoke as if it’s understood that the mother is responsible for the
upbringing of the kid. I guess it was difficult for human beings with mustaches
& beards to bring up a baby and to do the other household chores.
2005
I was disappointed the
day Dia was starting school. We moved to a bigger house, but the damn trucks were
there too. The silence was back. By now, I had made acquaintance with silence. I
used to sit and cry for no reason for hours together when I had started living
in Seattle. But now, I just smile. My mission in life had become giving Dia
whatever she needed. I had made up my mind to fight Sujoy to not bring up Dia
with "Indian traditions". Sujoy also had started adapting himself to the American
way of life after having lived there for over 5 years. He knew that Dia
wouldn’t grow up like an Indian Nari. Infact I had great pleasure in
poking him, when I tell him that Dia is going to have a boyfriend by 16 and
probably will lose her virginity by then too. It was too much for him take, with
his Indian Protha.
When I was 12 years old, I had confessed to my mom that I
had read her pages. But she was chill about it. And from that day, she opened up
much more to me and I saw another side of hers. I even offered her that she
could be the co-author of the novel I planned to write. I stole a look at her
online diary few months back to see if she had updated anything.
2014
I have read about
those interview questions asking where you see yourself in 5 years from now.
Make that 10 years and I am damn sure I wouldn’t have answered that I would (still)
be a housewife weighing 170 pounds. The fact that I spoke in pounds made me
less of who I used to be in my past life. Even the rains stopped reminding me
of Calcutta. I guess time is the best healer, but it’s the best killer too. But
I was so glad that I developed the habit of sitting at the park observing
people. It was an active atmosphere with people running/walking/playing with
their dogs/kids. I did my stroll and that was about it. Until one day when I
saw God. He was running in the form of an autistic child. He ran all over the
place, but run he did. I ended
up chatting with her mother and she said the running helped him keep his
outbursts in control. Everyone needs a spark in their lives. I had misplaced my
matchbox a long time back. But out of nowhere there it was - The spark – I started
walking.
Soon enough, I started
walking at a good speed. I started with making a
couple of rounds of the park and then it slowly increased to 4 rounds. But I
wasn’t happy just walking. I wanted to run. Run like Forest Gump. I would wake
up at 4 for preparing the parcel service and would be done by 6. Many a day I
wouldn’t be there when Sujoy woke up. I left him to prepare Dia for school too.
And slowly I could jog. The first day I tried to jog, I could see stars after
3-4 minutes. But as with anything, with practice things start looking easy. I
could run 3-4 minutes on one leg. And before I knew I could run around the
whole park in 15-20 minutes. I could see that I was slowly fitting into some of
my old clothes again. I made a few good companions at the park too. One of them suggested that I should try to run a 5K marathon. I
got kicked about it and started targeting the marathon. When I first told Sujoy,
he was quite surprised. He couldn’t believe that I could run. But he knew he
couldn’t say no. Not when I have threatened to walk out of the marriage a few
many times and he knew if he restricted me more, I would end up doing it. I was
an American Citizen by then, you know. I found the dead me wake up from my
twenties.
I ran the 5K marathon
quite easily. Even though I was amongst the ones who came last, after long I
felt content. I came back home and checked my weight. It had gone down to 140
pounds. I was on a roll. After a few months, the only reason I woke up was to
run. Dia could take care of herself now and Sujoy finally decided to eat
healthy – the cereals, salads and stuff – which meant I didn’t have to do too
much cooking. One of the days,
the weather was good. I wanted to try my new shoes that I had bought and
ventured out running. I do not remember the roads I took and after a while I
didn’t care. I think I was racing a car at some point, luckily the driver hit
the gas and I was left behind. But I noticed that I was fast. I initially
thought it’s the shoes, but then when in a few days’ time, I could do that
again, I knew it was me. Wings started growing in my leg. I wanted keep running. I should prepare for longer runs.
Prepare for longer runs, she did. As I stood near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, I
just hoped that she would finish it. I knew she had practiced enough.
But I was fearing that she would be intimidated by the other runners. I knew
that Marathon was a big deal and runners from around the world would
participate. I was only hoping to see her come running towards us. The
contestants started crossing the line one by one. I knew I had to wait for few
more minutes before I see her. I readied my ‘Proud of you, Mom’ placard. My dad
was holding a ‘Proud of you’ sign too with my mom’s name on it!
Dharani Bhattacharjee finished 20th in that year’s
Marathon. She was the 4th woman to finish the race. From being a boring soul,
my mom became my idol. I saw this Bollywood movie, the other day, in which the
hero wins a Gold for India. I am sure no one is going to make a movie on
Dharani. Or the thousand other Dharanis living out there. But all of them are
heroes, nevertheless.
