PROLOGUE: She had thought the studio would keep itself;
No dust upon the furniture of love.
Half-heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,
The panes relieved of grime. (Adrienne Rich: Living in Sin)
Slash!
The mirror shattered to a thousand pieces. And with it her ‘Mon’.
She folded the purse and slipped it away in her jacket pocket and swept away the pieces of crystal glass with her feet to one side of the winding road she was on. She wore converse shoes since she was out for her midday walk, lil’ Nero in his blue two-wheeled baby carrier exclaiming now and then, the sun never failed to amaze him. It had a hypnotizing effect on both_ mother and son. With a sweep of her left foot, she cleared the remaining pieces of glass away from the road. To the weeds and shrubs that grew carelessly beside the road, to the greens no one cared to take care of or even look at when they passed. Mon flew back to the greens and dirt of the side-way unwilling to let the eyes off from the crystals glittering in the light of the strong afternoon Sun. She dragged the two-wheeler to the footpath and stopped to rest. Nero couldn’t be happier. He talked to the Sun and to the inanimate objects all around, unhesitant. It didn’t seem to matter whether they responded or not. He had to talk and that was all. Mon closed her eyes. Nero when he talked with that lopsided smile of his on his face he looked very much like his daddy, Querida.
Walls painted bright yellow. Posters and portraits all around. Four-poster bed. Three-legged ragged leaning table used for meals. Bathroom colored stalking red.
And, THAT mirror.
That mirror at the sink with the cracks left unattended to.
Perfect.
The perfect contented marital life but with a few cracks that had started appearing between the two left unattended to like the cracks on the mirror for long.
The unshaved drooling face in the first light of the dawn.
Didn’t Nero look so much like him during his first feed of the day?
The listening to cries of birds from the distant sky, fingers in fingers.
Nero loves the birds too. Lying down in his Mum’s chest, together they would listen to the birds sing in delight in the early light of the dawn after his first feed.
Eyes to the ceiling painted chrome yellow. Yellow: the color craved by both.
The distant ringing of the telephone in the background of a perfectly satisfying time in bed.
The woes and fears of the Mum’s (Mon) Maa crashing down in the empty apartment once he leaves. Followed by guilt, a moment of thoughtfulness, then indecision and then—the framed photograph of the twinkling eyed Querida by the telephone letting the receiver fall from her hand back to its stand after ringing not more than thrice. And then the cloud clears.
The sudden unexpected buzz of the bell startles all souls in the empty apartment, living and dead. Querida has returned home early to give company to the melancholic ‘Mon’.
Dinner of noodles and beer. Strawberry ice-cream. Gold flake. Late night movie.
Fulfillment of insatiable desires. Promises made. (kept..?) And broken.
Then some of John Mayer. Curtains drawn. The eyes close and with it the world dies.
Blankness. No parallel world. No dreams. Dreams they’re light years away. No way.
And then, a new Sun.
“Whispers and small laughter
Between leaves and hurrying feet
Under sleep,
Where all the waters meet...” (T.S. Eliot: Marina)
The world is born. Eyes open and look for Querida’s blatant face, stare at it for 5 long minutes and she ran for the bathroom.
There. This was the end of yet another child. This: her second miscarriage.
Then, life would go on after few weeks of disbelief and despair.
It didn’t matter he’d said.
Life went on smoothly until one day the cracks could be seen way too distinctly in the bathroom mirror_ and looking at the faces of the weary Mon and her dissatisfied Querida seemed such a disgrace.
Querida was in love. Again.
And this time with a lady who could satisfy him to the fullest and better still get pregnant within 2 years of their living together.
“A miscarriage is a natural and common event. All told, probably more women have lost a child from this world than haven't. Most don't mention it, and they go on from day to day as if it hadn't happened, so people imagine a woman in this situation never really knew or loved what she had.
But ask her sometime: how old would your child be now? And she'll know.” ― (Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams)
And she knew too. Though she was pregnant for the third time. She knew by then, one would be two and the other one and a half years old. If only, they survived.
Mon returned to Central Avenue once more. The divorce papers felt heavy in her duffel bag. She could tear it to pieces and watch them burn out one by one and cry over it sitting on her knees till she felt better. She could run back to the bathroom and look for once at the forbidden looking glass, staring straight in her eyes. Try to figure out what exactly in that glass made it look so cruel like it did at that moment. She knew.
The glass it had her life written all over it. It had 8 years of her life in it. It held Querida’s face so close to hers that her ‘Mon’ couldn’t sneak away from it. It had the queer eyes of his looking right into her. Right under her clothes.
The glass had its own way of reminding her of the bits of her he’s left with him. And the pieces of her he’d left scattered in filthy grains of roadside dirt in Park-Street, in the empty shampoo bottle in the bathroom stack, in the stark silence of the room at night, in the absence of the creaking noises of the bed in the ringing of the telephone now reduced to just 2 rings.
It was her. It was her all along.
The wedding. The wedding against Maa’s wishes. The bus to the 64/1 Ballygunge place residence they’d bought together. Ticket to Gangtok for the honeymoon. And then, the baby. All the babies’ infact. It was her all along and still is. She carried him in her everywhere. He was a part of her she would never deny. She would break the glass into pieces; let the shattering noise it made madden her to insanity. Break down on the bathroom floor and cry over the broken pieces letting the mascara laden tears make a trail on the slippery floor cry over Querida of some other time.
Then she would feel him inside her, a soft kick. She would get up. Put on the kohl. Then the mascara. Get a new mirror. Put it up again and then. Get a life.
This was the start of a new beginning.
“I imagine this midnight moment’s forest.
Something else is alive, beside the clock’s loneliness...
And this blank page where my fingers move…” (Ted Hughes: The Thought-fox)
The wails and cries of midnight. The nocturnal noises.
She sat up. Fed little Nero. Rocked him back to sleep. And sighed.
Sitting up on the pillows she stared at her boy all night with kohl-lined eyes, a ray of hope twinkling in the iris as they watched.
The world never died. The mirror never cracked. And the ‘Mon’ was alive.
And so was the world.
The little boy who lied on his back sucking his left thumb in his sleep could make his Mum proud of everything she’d ever done in her life. Proud of the life she’s lived. And prouder still of the life she was living. Thank the Almighty, the Mother of all mothers, for the mighty heart she was born with_ for being able to bring a child to the light of the world and believe in children in spite of her many failures.
A child whose every inch of porcelain skin and whose letting in and out of breath breathed the strength of a woman of all women. And the cowardice in men.
In some men unfortunately in all men that she’d seen in a lifetime.
EPILOGUE: Its like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story. (Patrick Roth fuss)
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