Mother's First Play
[Acknowledgement: This story was first published by Pena.litmag
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Mother’s First Play
There’s no such a
thing as a natural death…
– Simone de Beauvoir
Prologue
Mother is a 9/11 survivor… She’s much
more than just ‘survived’ an early divorce: she’s left an indissoluble mark in
that raving, ravenous world of Indian dance while still raising me and my
sister, as a single parent, to be in our own ways independent, sensitive,
thinking artists…
She’s survived the storm of Social
Media: she’s never allowed it to clinch a rigid identity on her: she’s neither
become one of those dance-aunties who’re always apt to post videos of them
teaching ‘expression’ to two-year-olds, nor one of those lotus award-winning
aunties, who’re always apt to post photos of them hobnobbing with the powers
that be: she liked to be seen mostly around cocktails; friends; original
artists, young and extant, not yet fully known to the wider world. She’s a
great benefactor of the LGBT+ community, she has hosted many a drag performer
in her community-outreach programs, she has acted in so many an
anti-establishment play – so that the right wing is wary of her; but she is so
overtly, even arrantly, religious, and a glance at her social media pages will
suffice to tell that she covertly supports the views of many a right wing boomer
(she even called that blighter – who wrote a book on that blighter, who,
under a pseudonym, wrote a book on himself, in which he gave himself the
appellation “veer” or “brave” – she called this writer-blighter a Literary Rock
Star!: did she do this specifically to irk me: to remind me of my impotence?):
anyway, for this reason, the left wing also is wary of, if not altogether
indifferent to, her: mother is neither here nor there: she’s Humpty Dumpty, an
inveterate teenager! Mother is me, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, my
unmet paramour, my unborn daughter, all bunged into one mass of ineluctable
energy.
To the world, mother is a performer, nonpareil.
(I feel, however, that she performs exclusively for me: I am her ideal reader,
her goddess; and the public to which she performs: the medium, or channel, or
conduit, to get to me). To the world, mother is a performer: but to me, for
whom she performs, she is just a survivor…
Which is why tears trickle down my shin
as I write this. I hope and pray that she survives this cancer.
.
‘Nikita,’ the doctor, who was mother’s
high-school chum said, ‘It’s just a stage-2 cancer da, relax! No, no, we won’t
have to do a mastectomy and all: we’ll go for a breast-conserving surgery only,
but yours is a triple negative, grade 3 cancer: so it’s going to be a
Neoadjuvant therapy: we will have to begin with a chemo – to shrink the lump –
then move to surgery; after that we will go for radiation; so yes, sorry,’ she
went on, with a heavy heave of breath, ‘It’s better you shave off your hair.
There are these miracle gels: Dutasteride by DutaMax, and Zenoxidil F pro, and
this shampoo: KZ plus: you can start using them; we’ll put you on Minoxidil,
and administer scalp-cooling while you’re on chemo – I assure you – by November
or December, when we have the surgery, you’ll look like Halle Berry in Die
Another Day! This Margali, you are going to be in a new body. You are going
to be the Babe!’
‘In this novel I’m reading at the
moment,’ mother said, producing from her hand bag Deborah Levy’s latest, ‘The
protagonist – who’s a pianist (her middle name’s Miracle!) – she has the hair
you see of a prima ballerina: yes, like mine… she then dyes her hair blue and
something in her dies too: this is just before she is about to perform a piano
concerto in the Great Hall of Vienna (oh! the number of times I have sat in its
golden aisles!) During the concerto, for two minutes and twelve seconds, the
audience gets to hear her, and not the composer. The conductor gets enraged.
Miracle walks out. ‘Blue was a separation from my DNA,’ she says, ‘do you think
“Bald” will be mine?’
‘Did you like the book?’
‘You haven’t already started your
palliative care, dear?’
‘Nikita –’
‘It was different from the other
Deborah Levy novels. One had the feeling that one had eaten variously but had
missed a meal. But maybe I should read it a second time, after all the book is
about doubles! I sometimes wonder if I have a double, looking at me from
a distance, typing and typing my story. Or do you think it’s too late to hope
for an original? Anyway, what about the palliative care da, am I insured for
it?’
They laughed. You see,
unless you are the queen consort of England or someone of that financial
ilk, it may be hard for you to even understand how rich we are. It took a bevy
of CAs to file my IT returns last month and what I get from the family-owned
MNC is but a trickled-down tad of what mother might be getting… A merest
trifle, say the ad-money she generates yearly through her dance magazine Naayika
– which she refers to as her first child – might tide her over such expenses as
are not covered by her massive insurance package. Presently, Dr. Radha, who was
one of Chennai’s premiere oncologists, asked mother to take off her
shirt.
‘Lift your left arm,’ the doctor said.
And then, with her forefinger, she started spiraling around mother’s bare
breast, moving towards the slightly scabbed areola.
‘That’s the lump there,’ she said, ‘The
exact spot as in this mammogram. It’s small enough (I’ve saved much worse
cases), but it’s near the heart, da, that’s why I wouldn’t suggest a surgery
right away. Also, in the future, there may be complications, Cardiomyopathy and
all that. The sooner we get done with this the better Nikita. Can you get admitted
this Monday, 14th? We’ll start with
steroids and some anti-allergic –’
‘14th is impossible. If you remember August 14th is when our Dora came into our lives.
Also this might be her last birthday,’ mother’s eyebrows puckered as she spoke
of her favourite Labrador, ‘Can we have it on 15th? Are you working on Independence Day?’
mother went on, flinging her cape jacket back on, ‘Also, for how long will I
have to be admitted?’
‘We’ll discharge you by evening. Just
come in the morning with an empty stomach and an open mind. I don’t think
you’re on medication of any sort – excellent! Tomorrow morning I’ll send some
nurses to your place: they’ll have some tests done: just the usual ones, and
then we’ll start chemo on Tuesday, if everything is okay, as I am sure
it will! In three or four months we’ll have the lumpectomy... But thank god the
lump’s at the bottom! It won’t really show: you can even wear a really low-cut
top. There might be some little swelling initially, even in the arm,
but I should be able to correct that.’
‘Thank God for that! I normally fly to
New York soon after Margali. Ameya will have to take care of the
dogs all by herself,’ she said, looking at me.
‘What is wrong with Dora, poor thing?’
‘No medical complication: it’s just
that she is too old. She’s been through a lot. She was abandoned if you
remember. At this point, we only hope her passing will be smooth. The vet says
she doesn’t have long. It might be any time now. Her consumption has gone down
drastically. And she breathes very heavily: har har har.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that Nikita. I
remember how excited you were when you named her after your favourite dancer:
Isadora! You know, I’m so busy with work and all that but I try my best to
catch up on everything you do. I’ve always thought of you as the Isadora Duncan
of Indian dance. What do you say, Ameya? Isn’t mummy the Isadora Duncan of
Indian dance?’
‘No,’ I thought, being the true-blue
jazz-head that I am, ‘She is the Dorothy Donegan of Indian
dance.’
Two days later…
Tomorrow is Dora’s birthday. Today a
little puppy is whining in the backstreet and Bessie just won’t let me be. I’ve
had all the neighbourhood dogs neutered, spayed, and vaccinated. I don’t know
how this has happened: this new litter.
The next day…
‘Happy Birthday Dora. We’re sorry you
couldn’t eat the chicken cake we had made specially for you. Bessie and Byron
thoroughly enjoyed it. We’ll miss you Dora. But we’re glad you’ll be free from
the Anthropocene, and run roughshod, like a dog with two tails, through those
vast asphodel fields of happiest memories.’
The whining did not stop. I thought the
pup was hungry. I went down, feeling a bit like Antoinette, to feed the dogs
cake. The pup was hurt. A concrete slab had fallen on its hind legs. It was
covered with dank and faeces, its eyes were bleared with mucus. I took her
immediately to the nearest vet in an auto. The vet had her cleaned, fully
examined; he had an X-ray done of her spine and legs and declared there was no
fracture. He said he’d have a PCR test done to see if the dog was infected with
the following chiefly: Rabies Virus, Canine Distemper Virus, and Neospora
caninum: a protozoan parasite. He would also have a CT scan done to check if
there’s a clot in the brain. He recommended we admit her for two days. The
visiting hours were 4 PM to 6 PM. All developments and test reports would be
automatically updated in the pet portal.
The next day…
Mother’s cut her hair really short.
Military cut. But with two streaks of blue running through. Is this my mother,
whose hair was massaged on every Diwali day by her grandmother, with oil
steeped in cumin, pepper, and ginger; and then washed by her mother, lovingly,
with ground soap-pod?
‘Bald is a separation from my DNA,’ she
said later in the evening, swilling stout, though Dr. Radha explicitly forbade
alcohol during chemo.
Mother’s “blood works” were perfect;
and her “vitals”. Her “treatment plan” was explained to her (privately and
elaborately by Dr. Radha herself). Mother was going to be on an EC-Paclitaxel
“regime”. The ‘E’ stood for Epirubicin and the ‘C’ stood for Cyclophosphamide.
Mother’s body-surface area was: 2.1 m2 (this was abnormal given her height (5’10”) and weight (67 kg): but
ancient Indian texts concerning dance expect a dancer to have large expressive
eyes and a body that speaks). In accordance with her body-surface area: 200 mg
of ‘E’ was to be given intravenously over 15 to 20 minutes; then 1200 mg of
‘C’, also intravenously, over 30 to 60 minutes. A sitting was referred to as a
“cycle”: she’d have four cycles of the EC: once every three weeks, and then, if
the recovery is good, the next four cycles of ‘Paclitaxel’ will be
“dose-dense”, and the chemo will finish in four months; we could move on to
surgery and radiation and just be done with it. But mother would have to give
her undivided cooperation…
Perhaps that is why I was so pissed,
when, after her chemo, she asked the driver to drive us straight to Blotto! Her
favourite resto-bar. ‘We’ll just tuck in some tacos,’ she said. She drank three
large pints of stout, saying the most ridiculous things, and one of Lager,
which is when she announced, theatrically: ‘I am going to write a play…
Dancing, you see, is like swimming; writing is like flying. The last ten or so
years I have been a sort of cormorant. Flying and Swimming. I am more or less
done with dance (though I’ll continue to produce fresh dance-work), I am going
to commit myself to flight: I’ll write short plays: three minute plays, four
minute plays... radio plays... one more Lager please.’ ‘No. No. No.’ I
screamed, many people looked, some pretended not to. ‘We’re going, bill
please.’ Mother was as shocked as you might be if you witnessed your own shadow
scream at you.
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Two days later…
Mother has close to a hundred thousand
followers on Instagram. She decided to kill this account. She began to start
giving the impression that this account had been compromised. She started a new
account: Nikita Next. And invited her old followers to follow her on her
new page. Many – actually most – didn’t. Perhaps, you’ll figure out why when I
describe her very first post (that went viral and kept her phone constantly
ringing): in this forty five second video she explains–wearing a Barbie pink
Birthday cap that she also uses as a prop to explain the Freudian Iceberg – she
explains the idea of Freudian Slip. Then, by way of giving an example, she
plays a ten second video of the Indian Premier, addressing the US congress,
where, according to mother, he made a Freudian slip when he said, ‘I believe
that “investigating'' in a girl child lifts up the entire family.’ Can you
imagine the impact that this might have had on all those simpering ninnies who
went about calling her, ‘akka, akka,’ or sometimes, much to my consternation,
‘aunty, mami’? “Bitch please,” I felt like saying to them on their face,
“My mother is not your fucking aunty.” She introduced herself as an ex-dancer
now into producing fresh dance-works, acting, and writing plays and poems. She
was apparently also interested in Stand-up Comedy! I feel mother has stopped
merely surviving, and has started really living, intensely.
The next day…
My twin Kriya Nambi came down to see
us. She came scissoring in with her chic long-legged Kriya Nambi walk; her baby
boy perched on her ridgy hips.
I went to the Vet’s soon after she’d
just arrived. Mother called me, as I was getting late, but I didn’t talk for
long because I was looking for an auto to drive home the whining puppy that the
doctors declared Quadriplegic. The poor little mite. No, poop-dynamite. I think
I should wear a Macintosh next time I carry her around. Also, she tested
negative for all the viruses and so I could now allow her to mix with Bessie
and Byron.
In the auto I was thinking of how I
have never really met my biological father. Mother has acted as both mother and
father for me and Kriya. Kriya, you see, was always the juggler. Even as a girl
she picked up dance from mother, painting from grandmother, music from
great-grandmother; elements of business management from grandfather. She gave
dance performances, painting exhibitions; acted in plays, did great in
examinations and flew to New York on a big scholarship to study fine arts. It
was at New York that she’d met her boyfriend, an American-Ugandan musician
named Wynton Naluguwa. They married a year back in both the traditional Indian
and Ugandan ways.
As an art-curator and stage-designer of
course she stood without an equal! Hadn’t she set the opening chorus of Bach’s
St. John Passion in a Vishnu temple so that just as the choir that lay on the
ground during the orchestral opening rose and sang, “Herr…” a curtain rolled to
reveal a recumbent Vishnu? Very controversial. But praised. Like everybody else
in our illustrious family she knew not what Failure meant. Everybody else, that
is, except me: who has always been an addlepated dolt, smeared always, I
thought, as I Google-paid the auto-driver, from top to bottom, with puppy
poop.
Also, Dora has completely stopped
eating or drinking. She just digs her huge head into mother’s armpit, laying on
her lap – same as she would when I’d just rescued her from the streets and
brought her home from the vet; and she soon became, what mother would call, her
second self.
Kriya left tonight for the Bombay
Biennale hosted by the NCPA. She was shocked at mother’s indifference (and her
hair). The old mother would’ve hugged her and taken selfies with her and posted
them on her Instagram page; this one seemed completely drowned in Dora: giving
her belly rubs and trying to get her to drink some water or eat her favourite
snack: chicken and duck chunkies.
Also, she seemed not a bit worn out by
the chemo: ‘Alarmel Valli,’ she said to the doctor, who’d just asked her not to
strain herself too much, ‘Alarmel Valli danced a full margam, varnam and all,
at the Music Academy right in the middle of her chemo. We dancers are made
differently, our bodies swim through a different ether,’ ‘Yes,’ the doctor
said, ‘Maybe the thing that you dancers and we doctors have in common, is the
fact that we both take the body very seriously,’ ‘Oh! yes,’ mother, who holds a
BA Hons in English Literature said, ‘T.S. Eliot calls it, “The
laceration of Laughter at what ceases to amuse,”’
Five days later…
Mother didn’t cry or anything. I cried
a lot. She just took to locking herself up for long hours in her study and
doing her thing. She made a reel about her time with Dora: again, it went
viral. It was some sort of a motion-poetry-work she’d come up with: it involved
motion and words. Her words. In her voice. Its title: two middle aged women
on a beach…
It’s been three days of darkness
without Dora! Nila baby was discharged the day Dora left this world; she’d
helped make me less miserable; also Nila baby came into our life the same day
Dora had come – August 14th – if you
recollect.
Will Nila baby be mother’s new second
self? It remains to be seen. As of now mother is indifferent. She feels that
her hair is beginning to drop quite alarmingly. All over her body. Also Nila
baby is still in a horrible state. She is still severely depressed. The doctor
had said – after charging me enough to buy his daughter a new iPhone – that if,
in three months, Nila walks, it will be a miracle.
September 03…
Today – less than two weeks since her
discharge – Nila baby scampered her first few steps. Quite a miracle.
I was at the Madras Thrift Store trying
on this pale ochre “pre-loved” top when my phone began to buzz. Mother. “Check
your WhatsApp fast, Nila stood up on her own and walked.” It was true.
Unbelievable. Quite a miracle.
Over the past week, I’d been giving
Nila physiotherapy. She ate with appetite. Her sense-organs were sharp. She
responded well to therapy. Much like mother’s tumour. Mother’s second cycle of
chemo is scheduled for tomorrow at 9:30 in the morning. After that we’ve
decided to go to Blotto! on the condition that she doesn’t drink more than two
pints of Shandy. No Stout. No Lager. Nothing stronger. Just Shandy. I’ve said
earlier that Mother has always had the heart of a teenager. Now she’s also got
the brain of one. That she was meant to be a rebel is a given. But the old
mother tried very hard to fit in. This one does not. This one’s like George
Sand wearing Chopin’s pants.
The next day…
‘There is discernible hair loss,
Nikita,’ Dr. Radha said before mother’s chemo, ‘Also, your scalp is so tender,
like a baby’s! Not to worry. I hope you are applying those gels that I
prescribed?’
‘Yes, Ameya applies them religiously
and massages for half an hour.’
‘You’re so lucky Nikita. Okay, I’m sure
the scalp-cooling will help, anyway, also the tumour has shrunk by half in the
first cycle itself! Quite a miracle! May have something to do with your diet
Nikita. Anyway, we’ll see how it behaves a week after this cycle and we’ll
probably go “dose-dense” after that. So, by mid-December you’ll be back. New
and fresh. Hair and all. Babe! But please don’t dye your hair for at least six
months, Nikita. And. No. Alcohol.’
‘Yes myaem,’ mother said, and winked at
me. Dr. Radha left and the nurse began the chemo and scalp-cooling.
‘Thanks,’ mother said, some time later.
I shrugged. She then got back into a quiet brown study.
I thought of Nila. Dora, Bessie, and
Byron are golden dogs. Bessie and Byron, both of them indies, actually have
strands of hair that are pure gold. To me they represent the sun. Nila is the
moon. She is silver with black patches across her body, eyes, ears; she has
thick silver paint brushes for eyebrows. A quieter, cuter, more delicate, more
accommodative puppy may never be found. Every time she wants to poop or pee,
she takes a little constitutional in our lawn and then with great difficulty,
whimpering in pain, she scampers back and drops down on her soft bed. To me,
Nila represents something in us that had been limp, tortured, undernourished,
dying, and we have brought this thing back to life. Symbolism?
‘I’m writing a play,’ mother announced
suddenly. ‘Would you like to hear about it? I’ll tell it to you anyway: it’s
just a forty minute play. It’s going to take the form of a verbal joust between
two people: Sita, and Meenakshi – the woman whom the patriarchy so cruelly
labelled “Shurpanakha”. Both of them are poets, in a train, on their way to a
Lit Fest. The entire scene takes place in their coupé; Sita wakes up in the
middle of the night and finds a mysterious looking object placed on the stand
between the two beds. She wakes Meenakshi up to ask if the strange contraption
belongs to her. It doesn’t. The object is essentially a counter-balance
weighing-scale with a red needle at its fulcrum so that the needle sways left
or right if the weights on the pans don’t match. On both sides of the needle are
white arms, so that the whole arrangement kind of looks like the traditional naamam…
You know the sort that grandfather would… okay… also there’s a microphone and
speaker through which they negotiate with this mysterious male voice.
‘Their circumstances have been reversed
this time round: Meenakshi is a young woman, very successful, winner of many a
prestigious awards; married to a German, with two sons. Sita is fifty two and
quite remote and serene; she’s not so much someone who wants to marry as someone
who doesn’t want not to; but children are a no-no. There’s still a remnant of
that old gusto: She has some three thousand followers on Instagram, though
she’s made just fifteen anodyne posts and herself follows no one. The whole
play moves like a kind of tennis-match styled debate. Each time one of them
scores a point against the other, the balance moves in their favour... In the
end, when they arrive at their destination, the balance, which had been first
disturbed by Meenakshi, is restored and a new bonhomie towards one another
burgeons in their bosoms. Do you like it? I’m completely letting myself go this
time.’
Mother, you see, is a tennis
aficionado. She’s always been hell-bent on initiating Nadal on the poetry of
Andal.
‘I’m more interested in the son –
Meenakshi’s son. Especially the second-born. I am writing a story now: Saint
Aubergine. You remember this story you told me when I was a girl: there was
this woman who’d always wanted a child: she kept praying and praying and after
lots of prayer she got a baby brinjal! This brinjal boy had divine gifts: he
eventually ends up marrying the princess of the state. I am reworking this
story. In my version: the boy is a young musician based in England: he gets
deported to India because he is found to be in the possession of marijuana. He
comes back to India, shoves some artistic interest into a land that has been
left fully fallow: derelict of any sense of curiosity, childlike wonder. He
then eventually marries – never mind whom – and the product of their unison
takes the form of two eggs laid by his paramour that they both warm and guard
like pigeons. The eggs hatch; slimy, slender and smiling, one with golden and
the other with silver down, two miracle-infants rise, with titchy arms and legs
and, above their bums, a fleshy hint of wings; they have the warm-heartedness
of a puppy and the hollow-boned aerial freedom of a pigeon; the earthly love
and attachment of a puppy, and the androgynous reproductive system of a pigeon.
Pretty, right? I can’t wait to get to the end.’
.
Epilogue
Mother would often say, ‘Mythology is
not something that happens in ancient texts: Mythology is something that gives
geometry to your everyday life: details change, but patterns remain.’ Of what
pattern am I a detail?
Shakuntala. As a father, mother has
been impeccable: she’s very much the sage: virtuous (she’s as politically
correct as would not render her useless), supremely educated (she holds an MA
in Journalism, and a PhD in Gender Studies), keen at business yet charitable,
ever the dreamer and schemer, the aggressive go-getter, busy, tired, drunk,
faithful (to the best of my knowledge she has never had a paramour since Kriya
and I were born: she’s been faithfully married to herself: though, from photos
of a trip to Iceland, where she may be seen soaking amidst the fog of a Summer
afternoon in ‘People’s Pool’ at Fjallabak along with this particular dancer
friend: I’m beginning to feel she may have been “tipping the velvet,” as it
were!). So yes, as a father, mother’s been impeccable. As a mother, too – if
what Marguerite Duras says of mothers be true: “Our mothers are the
strangest, craziest people we ever meet.” – she has been
impeccable... She’s a diva; and like me and Kriya: a fervent fashionista.
Do you see now why I am a genetic calamity? Shakuntala? Then what about Kriya?
Children punish their parents for
questions, not being able to answer which, their parents produced them. One
part of mother wanted punishing: that part is with Kriya. The other part of
mother wanted nurturing: that part is with yours truly. One day in one of my
MFA classes one of my professors opened the first page of Hamlet and asked us
all, ‘Do you really think the man who wrote this celestial play, looked like
this dork?’ ‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘only a dork could’ve voluntarily gone through
such torture.’ As I’ve told you already, I’m a dork. I haven’t got a choice.
In the middle of Margali, when the
tumour disappeared and mother’s mammogram was as clear as a bell: mother staged
her play at our front garden: with Bessie, Byron, and baby Nila strutting all
over the place. She invited only her best-of-dearests. It received standing
applause. Soon after Margali, she left for New York as always. Only this time
there were going to be no collaborations, café-hoppings, dance-shows. She was
going to live with Kriya and quietly go about writing her plays, producing
dance-works by young and gifted dancers. What’s her game? Is she bidding on
becoming the Chekov of Chennai?
Anyway, I’m glad I wrote this journal
entry, because I’m sure that when I return to these pages many, many years
later, when I am at the dead-end of my days, these will be remembered as the
months that turned my hair silver. I’m glad all that I’ve published so far –
all that bilge – is out of print. These months will be remembered as
formative.
Fiction and Poetry are different.
Poetry is a nomadic art, fiction is just an invitation home. How can you do
this if you haven’t got a home into which to invite? I look outside the window
at the street-almond tree at whose altar we interred Dora; the papaya tree
around which mother choreographed her last motion-poetry work; the peepal under
which my grandfather would sit with his morning coffee… what’ll happen to all
this I think, getting back to my chair. Will our teacups outlive our stories:
in what form? Our books, pens, succulents? Everybody goes through experiences,
but when a Shakespeare loses his father, that loss is turned into a play –
Hamlet – that will move us until the word ‘immortal’ bears some meaning. I’m
still learning to write. But the purpose of my writing has become clear: To
preserve. To preserve all that is best in us. To preserve the Patterns even as
the Details grow democratically intimate! I’m a preserver: I’m here to preserve
mother.
.
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