My Sis: Through My Eyes (16)
Chapter – 16 ( The Marriage [Dream?] in the Doldrums)
I am writing a novel in a way few novelists could have ever thought of writing. My first draft is my last and the final draft always takes its toll as I do the editing after it gets to see the light of the day by courtesy of Facebook.
I am not very sure why I am in such a hurry to write this one. Besides, it is hard to believe that I am on a mission that doesn’t concern the well being of my family but that of my sister instead. To a lot of people this very idea might seem detestable, preposterous. But let me tell you this, dear reader, that I am not the prying sort. Nor do I delight in ohers’ suffering or pains. I also have no desire of having fun at the expense of others, let alone my sister. What is there a brother for if he doesn’t feel sad at her sister’s sadness, anguished at her anguish, joy and happiness at her joy or happiness?
Now for the people who have started wondering about the purpose of this chapter, please bear with me for some time more. The topic I am going to introduce is delicate and needs to be written with a lot of consideration and subtlety.
If there is one thing I like or don’t like about my late father’s family, it has to be the fact that we, all the siblings. have been so very cold about what happens in the extended families of our siblings! I am not such a big fool to realize that over curiosity kills relationships (sorry, the cat). But I have seen other parents asking their children about what is going on in their married lives, and most of the people, I believe, shouldn’t find anything wrong with that. After all, those asking questions are the parents. They have made lots of sacrifices, sweated it out for the future of their children and spent a number of sleepless nights when things looked bleak and hopeless with the children. I know there are some parents who show a little too much interest in the married lives of their kids ( to a parent, even at 40, his/her child is a kid only!), creating innumerable problems in the process and bringing untold misery upon themselves as a result. My late Ma would initially at least ask me what I had at my in-laws’ for dinner. But I can’t remember a single occasion when any of my siblings, and mind you, ours was a very large family indeed – can’t recall a single occasion when any of my siblings asked me if the family I got married into, was good and treated me good as well! On hindsight, I have this feeling that my Late Ma, extremely refined as she was for someone who could barely study upto class six as she was married off at 13, she might have asked the first few of her children about their in-laws. But it couldn’t have taken her long to realize that her own children were beginning to get a bit, what should be the right word- suspicious of her intentions. Naturally, by the time I, the youngest member of my late father’s family, got married, she thought it best to ask as few questions as wouldn’t make him suspicious whether she cared for his in-laws at all or not!
Naturally, the thought of asking my sister about her in-laws never crossed my mind. Besides, I was her younger by two years and wasn’t supposed to poke my dirty nose in the affairs concerning my elder sister. There may be another reason why I never asked my Sis about my bro-in-law’s family. A couple of years into the marriage and I turned out to be a regular visitor to their house. During the winter break when I would come down to Kolkata from the god-blessed country of BHUTAN, Sis would come to 41 to meet Ma and all her relatives, spend the day in and around our ancestral home, and at around 7-8, she would get back to her place. I’d accompany her at that time. My bro-in-law ( he was more of a brother to me than an in-law) lost his father quite early in life and on his uncle fell the onus of looking after the single-parent nephew and his widowed mother. Bengal was Bengal then and America still remained a distant country, out of reach. People believed in relations, in joint families and a lot of such other things. Kaka Babu, my bro’s uncle was a nice man, completely unlike the one you get to read or hear about in “Woman Unknown” by Tagore dealing with the Indian culture and traditions of the 19th century. Several times I heard Kaka Babu gloating about our family in particular, and 41 in general.
So I liked their place and would prefer to spend the evenings turning into nights at Maniktala. On some late afternoons, my best friend cum nephew, my eldest sister’s son, Subho, who was pursuing his Law Degree at that time in Kolkata, would join me there, and my bro’s sister, the daughter of his uncle, Bulu (Bulbuli), would come down from their room on the first floor, hearing the knocks, and the rest of the evening would be sheer fun, enjoyment and adda. Sometimes, Bulu would crane her neck out of their roof to call her friend, Mou, who was a good singer and a next house neighbour to come over. We would listen to her songs, join in the singing with our tuneless voice and all in all, bask in the glory and blissful ignorance of youth. Life was like a dream then. Unfortunately, dreams start vanishing the moment you wake up to the reality!
I have been writing about all this to let you know how foolish I have always been. Even when my sister’s only daughter got married, I could never imagine for a second that the first signs of wear and tear were all too visible in the relationship of two persons – Sis and Arunda, I would have given my one arm for! That things were not as lovey-dovey between my Sis and bro-in-law as an outsider would believe. Now let me remind you about my sister again. She married against her family’s wish, fighting her own battle till Ma summoned Barda, our eldest brother from Australia. So sharing anything, any glitches in her married life would have been just out of the question for her. But I’ll come to my Sis keeping mum over an important crisis in her life a little later. Coming back to Barda, financially, he was the most stable of the siblings but that might not be the reason why Ma, adept at her share of fair family politics, sent the summons to him. Ma realized that only Barda, Barda with his authority, would be able to firm this up at a very crucial moment of our family history. Barda came in answer to my Ma’s call and what a marriage it turned out to be! The sehenai, the decorations, the full-throated laughter and rejoicings that permeated the whole of 41, was like the vermilion mark glowing on my Sister’s forehead that wedding night!
How short-lived our fun-filled days are and what a permanent scar those memories leave on our heart! For thirty-five years my Sis and bro-in-law, were known to be an ideal match, the couple most worth emulating in our family circle. Their daughter by then, was married to a very reputed family in Kolkata as well. When, out of the blue, I came to know about the thaw in a relationship that meant more to me than anything else in the world. Surprisingly, I had an inkling into the souring relationship between my Sis and bro-in-law, from a conversation Barda had with Arunda in his apartment at Baguihati on a very lonely and dream- shattering night. I’ll write more about that in the next.
