It was early that morning in the year of 1999 that an eighteen-year-old Yamini welcomed a new ray of hope into her life. “It’s a girl child” the doctor said. There wasn’t one term to sum up how everyone received the news, while some were delighted, the others had their spirits sucked out. They started advising Yamini’s husband about what could be done to have a male child, some even went on to say, “it’s just okay, hope for a boy child next” even before Ramu had a thought of regretting his newborn. He didn’t regret.
While the outsides of the ward were filled with a variety of discussions and with more relatives coming in, Yamini sat up with a spark in her eyes looking out for her daughter despite the fact that from waist down, she was bleeding away. She was already in love with her baby though she hadn’t got a glimpse of her.
And the first time she held her in her pale arms, she knew that the baby meant the world to her, tears sprawling away from her eyes. Her daughter had the most beautiful brown eyes and the fluffiest cheeks flushed in pink. “Now, you are my reason to live, you are my best friend” Yamini said to her child.
Years passed and Meenakshi was growing up to be a beautiful young woman. She had the strongest bond with her mother. Yamini loved her daughter more than her sons. Even though she wouldn’t say it, it was quite evident.
An eight-year-old Meenakshi would spend all her evenings away dodging through the sprawling bazaars along with her young mother. Having a Rose-Malai matka kulfi as they entered the fashion street was a ritual to be gotten over with before they proceeded to do or buy anything else. Of the meagre she received from her husband, Yamini always made sure that she bought the best of things- clothes, bindis, everything you could possibly think of- for her little daughter. She saved up every month to buy new stuff for her daughter, she would design latest trends and get clothes made from the tailor, which her daughter would later adorn. There was even once on one of their bazaar visits when a woman pointed at Meenakshi and said “ iska size main hai kya? Bada waala..” Yamini warned the woman with bloodshot eyes and walked away indignantly holding her daughter firmly and leading her through the crowd and to a relatively calm nook behind a retail shop, she knelt before her daughter and broke down with a feeling that said “my daughter has to be protected”. Meenakshi, quite unaware of why her mother wept the way she did settled to placing her small palms on her mother’s warm, blood flushed cheeks -from all the anger and crying- to comfort her with sincere eyes and a soul unmoved.
Meenakshi grew up and their visits to the bazaar became more and more infrequent. She was now a middle schooler who had to start dedicating much of her time to her studies and sometimes friends. Yamini longed to spend time with her daughter but it took little time for her to realize that her Meenakshi was now growing up and needed to do what she was doing. So, she longed for the summer vacations instead.
Meanwhile, Yamini had a new found interest in embroidery. She once saw a group of neighbors walking together chirping away, upon inquiry she was invited to join them for embroidery classes and she thought to herself, “Why not?”
Meenakshi would recite English poems to her mom and give all the answers from SST mom had asked. She did not mind adding her own flavors to her answers as her mother, though not formally educated, was keen on “individuality”. After studying, Meenakshi would loiter around her mother where her mother showed her the new skills she had learnt earlier that day. “Now, this is Kutchh-Work" Yamini would show Meenaksi pointing at a piece of embroidered work. Meenakshi would carefully scan and look at it with awe. Yamini stole these little moments to smile with pride looking at her daughter who was immersed in observing what was shown to her. Hence, Meenakshi developed an excellent flair for arts. Though she didn’t practice, she had from her mother, taken after an exquisite taste for all that meant art.
Meenakshi grew up and Yamini became lonelier but what beat the feeling of loneliness for her was a feeling of concern. Her daughter was now actively morphing herself to fit in the world that she didn’t know was well above. Meenakshi now Meena, could hide sorrow behind smile. Her inability to fit like a piece of a puzzle with her peers she thought, was her biggest weakness while Yamini thought that it was only Meena’s strength that she outgrew the meek, fake world around her, the world that was afraid of being plain and honest like her daughter while Meenakshi thought that the only thing she ever outgrew was her mother.
Through a fair bit of her teenage, Meena kept pushing her mom away, fell into a rollercoaster ride of making a career of her own as her mother waited and waited with a smile to just have some words with her. Her mother never stopped waiting or her, and Meena, finally came.
All the naiveness and stupidity of early teenage wore off and Meena who had already gotten to a significant place where most eighteen-year-olds would not get, had changed. Meenakshi would now offer opinions, would now teach her mother science. Yamini sometimes thought to herself about the Meena she had been ten years ago, absorbing whatever her young brain could without questioning the world but making inquisitions of her own had turned into a Meena who would question the world for its unfairness and advising her mother on how she should get away with the toxic friends she’d made, the Meena who now was bold, fierce, mature. Something about her had really changed but something didn’t. Yamini was always tempted to think that her daughter was still a baby but would reckon herself that she too, was eighteen when she had Meena.
Meena would now shuttle between studies and many other activities. When back home on vacation, she would push her mother, now lost in responsibilities to pursue art. Upon Meenakshi’s insistence, Yamini made a good comeback and was now figuring a way with her daughter to set up a small business.
The worlds of Meena and Yamini had fairly diverged. Somedays, Yamini would ask “Meenu, is it wrong to talk to men?” and Meena would say “Absolutely not!”.
“Is it wrong for a homemaker to talk to men?”
“Why, No!”
And then Meena would go on to explain it to her mother that why it’s easier for working women to talk to men, simply because they are working alongside men! And why there is a great stigma around homemakers talking to men.
“You are not obliged to fit with the society mummy! Let them think what they think”.
When Meenakshi had political debates with her brothers, Yamini would often come in to offer an opinion. Though she had not much background and awareness about politics, her opinions were the most simplistic, brilliant and logical. Meenakshi would beam with pride.
While the mother was stuck and torn between two worlds, one that her daughter lives in, and the other, she was made to live in- in a world that didn’t care about her choice in continuation of education, let alone choice of education, the world that didn’t give her a choice of man, let alone marriage, a world that left her with no choice at all to make.
Good for nothing relatives would come home and smirk at Yamini’s paintings and say, “seems like you got a little too much time these days” instead of appreciating her. Meena would usher her to go on and would assure that the relatives didn’t deserve brains and appreciative eyes so didn’t have them.
“Ms. Meenakshi”, now started getting all the recognition for her good work. Yamini cheered for her but lately something unsettling had crept in. “Meena doesn’t cook, Meena doesn’t wash others clothes, Meena doesn’t do anything for the family then, why at the same age, I was to do those things, why was I made to starve, why was I not loved, why was I made to sacrifice?” Yamini often asked herself.
What Meenakshi made the most of her youth, made Yamini ache for the youth she had missed out on. A family who wanted to marry her off soon, an abusive family she would later enter, she clearly did not deserve it. Meenakshi hated it too, she hated what her mother was made to go through as much as she loved her mother. A lot.
Meena started making sense of it, she would say, “Mom, it is indeed the time to move on, it’s only hurtful to hinge onto the past, why don’t you make the most of what the future has to hold for you “. Yamini would listen patiently and try and take that optimism too but often fail to keep up. When a male friend would come to see Meena, she would say “We never had this opportunity to interact with everyone in the same way” and later make an exit and stay alone in a room for hours. Meena fully understood her mother but didn’t think it was quite fair that Yamini made direct comparisons with hers and her daughter’s life. Often times, Yamini would try to limit Meena and Meena would quite unabashedly tell her mother to recognize why she was choking on the inside and why exactly she didn’t want the same.
It was then going over Meena’s head, every comparison, every sharp remark, that she had finally declared “It’s probably all in our fate, that we have to live certain way, maybe you were the unlucky one” her heart broke as soon as she said it, and Yamini, broke as a whole.
Art was Yamini’s only therapy, she had wonderful Pinterest libraries. Yamini had once come across a picture of Meena with her classmate she had been dating. Yamini made sure she randomly dropped this into one of the fights to avenge her heartbreak. She did.
“You are nothing but a fucking whore who sleeps with men”, Meenakshi could not stand her identity being boiled down to that. She snapped and snatched her mother’s mobile and smashed it at the wall.
Yamini fell to the ground crying, all her paintings, all her libraries, everything was in her much beloved and now destroyed phone. Meena fighting all the anger she had wanted to cry too, what had she just done? Before a word could be spoken, Yamini rose, grabbed a leather belt and snapped real hard at her daughter’s face. Meena’s face started to bleed. She cried so hard that she soon had a panic attack. She froze. She was alive but didn’t move.
All went in daze and there was no idea about how Meena was brought to the hospital. The doctor declared that it would be months or rather years for Meena to be able to move again. Yamini who had been motionless too came to see her daughter.
Her daughter lay, in silence, so unlikely of her. Yamini was choking, her insides were crying but not a thing outside. She looked at her daughter’s face, her bloodshot eyes. “The same eyes that meant the world to me, the same eyes that showed a new world to me. The same eyes that asked fierce questions, the same eyes that led me through my life. The same sincere eyes of my eight-year-old daughter who knew no hurt but to pacify, the same eyes that offered to show me a new world.” Yamini fell to the ground and breathed her last.
Picture Source: Pinterest
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