Words. Rising like kites, falling like drones

Some conversations hit a wall and lie crumpled on the floor. You pick them up and try to nurse them back to recovery. Some words are push-offs. They don’t know how to ask for the hug they need.

What are your reasons? What do you have against getting married?” asks the mother.

They are in the mother’s bedroom. The doors of the wardrobe are open. The daughter is sitting on the bed. Mother has just turned towards her.

“I don’t want a marriage like yours,” says the daughter.

“What’s wrong with my marriage?” asks the mother. Her voice is suddenly sharp, thinner. Wounded. Her hands stretch towards the bed for support. She sits down.

The daughter is talking as if her verdict is self-evident. The mother is in shock. She needs to hold herself.

Conversations go wrong. Words become drones, unexpectedly hitting an unguarded target.

Years later, the daughter wants to go back and hold her mother. She wants to go up to her father watering the plants and embrace him.

“I am also your marriage, Mom. I am here.” Some scenes wait for closure.

“Whose baby are you,” a father asks his child fondly. She doesn’t answer, concentrating on keeping her sandwich together as she bites into it.

“Whose baby are you,” repeats the father. “Are you my little pumpkin?” he asks.

“I am the whole world’s baby,” she answers, her mouth full of food.

No. No, a voice says inside father’s head. Some words are too premature. Unexpected darts.
**

“Hello, Papa,” the adult daughter says, picking up her father’s weekend call.

“Is all well?” he asks.

“We are all fine,” she says. Her friend is very ill, she tells her father. She is worried.

“Why isn’t there someone else to help your friend?” he asks.

“I’m just sharing with you, Papa,” she snaps. “Not asking for solutions.” Some conversations are a default response. The protector wants to protect.

“Where is your empathy,” she wants to ask her father. “You hijacked my empathy when you were born,” he will answer if she asks. Thankfully, they talk about something else instead.

Scrolling on Facebook, he stops to read a friend’s new update. The friend has a fancy new job. He picks up the phone and calls.

“Hey, congratulations,” he says. “This sounds great.”

“Oh it took this for you to call me,” says the friend.

Some conversations hit a wall and lie crumpled on the floor. You pick them up, trying to nurse them back to recovery. Others soar like a kite, making a whooshing sound in the breeze.

“Mamma, if I hit you by mistake, would you complain about me to my teacher?” she asks, putting down her school bag.

“Never,” says Mamma with an over-earnest face.

“But the children in my class, Mamma, when I am rude to them by mistake, they complain to the teacher,” she says.

“Haw,” says Mamma.

The child runs off to her next distraction. The mother scribbles the conversation on a scrap of paper, hoping to run into it again some day. For a laugh, a stolen smile.

A family visits a new doctor. Mother enters the cabin first, with her eldest child next to her. She begins to talk. Father opens the door and lets two more children enter the room. The doctor interrupts the mother.

“I have three daughters too,” she says. “One of them died. I was not a good enough mother.”

Some conversations reach out to you, asking to be held. A memory fluttering in like a butterfly, and then gone again.
**

“If you are not happy with this life with us, you can leave,” she says to him. Don’t live in misery and burden yourself as well as me.” She feels strangely pleased, almost proud of herself.

“Let me hold a mirror to our faces and you tell me who is looking miserable. I’ll take your word for it, just look at both of us in a mirror and then judge us,” he says.

Some words are push-offs. They don’t know how to ask for the hug they need.

A child nudges his mother awake. He has a storybook in his hand. “Will you tell me a story, Mamma,” he says.

“No, Babu,” she mutters, pulling her sheet over her head.

“I am hungry, Mamma,” he says.

“Get a banana from the kitchen,” she says.

“Okay, Mamma,” he says, trooping off.

She has 3 more minutes to sleep in before he returns to say he cannot find the bananas.
**

A couple are returning from an orphanage. They are on a waiting list for adoptive parents. They had received a call to come to meet a toddler who is ready to be adopted. “We need time to decide,” they say, as they leave.

“What are we going to think about?” asks the husband as they drive away. “What do we need to take a decision?”

The wife is driving. She looks at him.

“Let’s go back,” he says. “Our child is waiting for us.”
**

It is an oppressive, hot afternoon. A woman puts her hand on her tight swollen belly. She feels her baby’s ankle. Or is it a fist? Her fingers speak their own language. Her tired eyes smile.

This essay was first published here