MUSINGS
Mum's the word
VRINDA PISHARODY
"A mother cleans the house," my five-year-old daughter read out aloud from her moral science text and looked at me expectantly for an explanation.
This was chapter two, Std. I — a level at which the grand cosmic family mystery is unravelled to five year olds and each member is defined and `roled'.
Her confusion was evident and understandable. "But you don't clean the house," she said, almost to herself. I mumbled something and pretended to continue wading through A Suitable Boy. The pretence was not lost on her and she caught me peering nervously through the pages as she resumed her reading.
Motherly definitions
"A mother washes the clothes" and "A mother cooks for us" elicited the same suspicious looks. I clutched on to my "suitable" armour and didn't respond. She read the next couple of motherly definitions silently (so as to not offend me, or so I'd like to believe) while I waited for the volley of questions.
"Think fast," I said to myself. "You have to salvage your pride. Say something. Say you do other things besides motherly things defined by the textbook. It doesn't matter that you can't think of any right now. It will buy you time. For heaven's sake, this is a five-year-old and not a mother-in-law from the Hindi soaps. You can reason with her. Speak up woman; speak up. Your family edifice is at stake."
I could have saved myself all this mental torture if I'd known that I had as much a chance to justify my existence as a flea caught red handed by a dog.
Vikram Seth's magnum opus was firmly pushed out of my tired hands and I heard the dreaded words: "We need to talk".
I protested mentally at her unapologetic plagiarising of the "we-need-to-talk" line; the sole prerogative of a mother and wife. But since aspersions were being cast on my role as a mother here, I let it pass.
"Do you realise that if I go by my textbook definition, Matu is my mother?" she asked grimly.
The defence
Matu is the one who cooks, scrubs, cleans, irons, shops and runs the house and quite honestly our lives. We share a simple bond. She works, I pay. Nothing Einsteinian about this equation and so I attempted to explain it to my five-year-old, "Matu needs money, so works for us. And in turn I pay her."
"And if I don't let her work," I added in a whisper to give it that touch of magnanimity, "her kids will starve."
There! That should melt the five-year-old, make her realise what an enormous sacrifice her mother was making — giving up housework so that a couple of kids got two square meals. I even managed to work a tremor into my voice.
For what seemed to be an eternity, (but was actually only a painfully long five second period,) we stared at each other. She, deciding whether to buy my story or countercheck the theory with the higher up authorities — the father and I, desperately trying to work on explanation B.
She broke the spell. "But you don't do anything here. You can do some work?"
"I do work for my company!" I protested indignantly, reminding her of the offline work I did for an IT firm thousands of miles away. "I am also a working parent like your father. It's just that I work from home."
She stood up, gave me one more of those looks that I had begun to recognise and spoke slowly as though to a jelly fish, "Papa is a surgeon, he saves lives. You work at your laptop and only type."
Since I couldn't pretend to have saved anybody with my writing skills (quite the contrary), I mumbled an apology for having clubbed and compared my profession to that of the noblest one. And while the actual existence of my grey cells continues to be a subject of much debate among family and colleagues, this much can be said of me: I knew when I had lost.
And this was one such time. I was moments away now, from surrendering my title as a mother and my rights as a parent. The brat had the triumphant look that threatened a five-minute sermon on "How to be a better mother".
Saved
I had no choice but to brace and wait. We had reached endgame. And then it happened. Fate intervened. Very naturally and very fortunately (for me, not for her) in her passionate arguing, the brat had presented her Moral Science bible as exhibit A, and thrust it into my hands. A grave mistake, she realised later.
Most sensible human beings will agree, that when being sermonised, it makes sense to look away from your captor's eyes and gaze at something less threatening. And though the book may have caused my downfall, it was still the lesser menacing of the two evils.
I gazed idly at the pages and there printed in big fonts was my salvation: Page Five, chapter Three. My turn to move. I interrupted her just as she had finished clearing her throat to begin. "Ahem, did we read the next page about what a child does at home?" Our eyes met briefly. The pact was made; the chapter was closed. "Books don't always tell the truth, do they?" she implored with a shamelessly faked wide-eyed look. "No, they don't," I replied, solemnly. And I may add, a little triumphantly.
Checkmate, child. Tomorrow may be yours, but today still belongs to me. And yes, we need to talk.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
