Writing on Ma again, after a long time:

The pujas were tough. They always are. A fire broke out at one end of our garden and the local boys had to come and put it out. That was on Dashami. It was 10 o'clock at night. There was no night-help for three days and it is scary in the house with two old people. Didn't sleep till almost 3 a.m.

So this entry is not chronological. Just remember some things and I thought I would write about them like Haiku compositions, almost:

Once Ma sat in the lounge/vast waiting area of Calcutta Hospital while Priya went to a birthday party in Kidderpore. It would be too much to come home, so she just sat there. This is the stuff of legends, like Priya confronting the Principal of my previous place of employment and telling her that she was harassing her mother!

Ma, hurt her foot badly the day she left for America to come and help me have Babu. Apparently she fell down from a tool on which she was standing to clean the fan in Baba's room. I have no clue why she would want to do something like that on a day she was flying out to America. But she is a rather misguided workaholic and she did what she did.

It was not possible for her to go to the doctor that day. I mean even if she tried, my Baba would probably have killed her! So afraid have we been of the menfolk in our lives! Ma of Baba and i of my ex-husband.

She came to America( end of September, 1993; Babu, my dear Babu, was born on October 11) and not  a whimper of distress escaped her lips.  And then she wore tight shoes. May be they were my discarded ones. Possible.

She has an infinite capacity to bear pain. Infinite capacity to suffer silently. She was the ideal wife to my father. Never bothered him for money during days of struggle. Somehow managed on her own. Tears prick my eyes when I think of that. Once she had said to me, 'eto kom taka chhilo', 'eto kom taka chhilo' ( we had so little money, we had so little money). I understand what this means. I do. Sheer absence of cash. How awful! Just this awful, glaring, unbearable lack-- a  hard and painful reality to accept.

I think she sometimes resents that i have a great deal of spending money. I have spent quite freely all these years that I have worked--on many, many things. But i have not denied myself the beautiful itmes of lcothing ( saris) that caught my eye. But before I came back to India, i too mostly remained on a very tight budget. But that story another day. Wore two pants and two sweaters the entire time ( 2 years) that Priya's father went to school. He flipped out once because I spent 1.5 dollars on another student couple who wanted something for a Christmas party. He was just livid.

I think I won't write about personal things. But it is impossible if I am writing about personal history and my mother is my personal history and to talk about her, inevitably brings me into her narrative and the telling of her story. Women's stories are generational and a continuum.