Snippets

A fruit-laden jujube branch on a summer morning. Full of promise for a day that could be spent getting tanned playing hopscotch and savouring the tangy delights afterwards. A perfect start for a summer break from school.

That was what I had on hand, delivered by post last fortnight. It also had the ring of raucous laughter of Grandma, the smell of salt from a day spent on the beach with Pa, a family vacation in Shimla and more. Strung together with thorny jujube stitches; Fireflies of memories flying off them- scattered, magical and fleeting.

I was still miffed. Ma couldn’t make it to Guwahati, she kept sending sweaters and quilts instead. It was not as if her eldest daughter was not going to be a first-time mother every other year! I was not even sure there would be a next time, considering I had to wait seven years for this one. Of course, I had Avish, to pander to my whims and fancies. But I never thought Ma wouldn’t be with me at these times. Pandemic was clearly not the best time to be welcoming your firstborn.

I didn’t feel like unfolding it. So, I took the quilt up to the baby’s room that was still in the making and put it in one more basket of the baby stuff we had been carefully sanitising and storing. As it happened to most of the things that I handled these days, this too wobbled and fell. But instead of exploding into a mess, it rolled just enough to reveal its heart.

A patch of black blooms on scarlet silk.

***

I looked every bit a troubled tween as I gawked into the life-size mirror affixed to the wardrobe. Nothing seemed to be working in my favour. The skin was too brown, hair too oily, chest too flat and hips too wide.

I needed to do something that made me feel good.

I grabbed a pair of scissors Ma had left in the open on the bench of her sewing machine. I briefly considered giving myself a fancy haircut. And then looked for something less drastic.

The wardrobe looked like a good alternative. I opened it. A faint scent of mothballs wafted from it. Pa’s best suits and shirts hung in a line on the right side. And Ma’s best sarees were neatly folded and kept on the left; bundles of Calcutta cotton, Kanjeevaram silk and Benarasi handloom in various motifs, checks and stripes.

One particular saree caught my attention. It had a bright red body, black blooms for borders and was smooth as butter. It had a tiny tear on its pallu. It seemed like a perfect treasure for my need to plunder. I pulled it out.

I unfurled it and folded it in the middle, took a white marker from the thread box and drew a semicircle that was going to form the plunging neckline of a very fashionable kaftan.

Soon my younger sister joined hands with me. I had bribed her with the promise of an eyepatch with any leftover cloth.

I could feel the tingle in my scissored fingers. And the seamstress in me was on a roll.

My sister marked the hemline as I laid down on the floor next to the sari with a semicircle hole. Once the hemline was marked, my scissors ripped off the extra length with a flourish. It was not in a straight line, but it didn’t matter as I decided then and there, I was going to give it an asymmetrical style.

I put the red spool on the pin of the machine and placed the bobbin underneath. I had seen how Ma passed the thread through the lever, hook and the eye of the needle and did the same. All I needed to do was sew the saree along the length of the borders, by leaving enough gap for the armholes and I would have fashioned a classy kaftan! I had seen Ma labour over the paper cuttings and pinning them down on the clothes, just to sew slips. And there I was, a born natural, producing a high end pret a porter in a jiffy!

I pedalled the machine and the red silk under the feeder got scooched into a bundle! I stopped. At that exact moment, as my luck would have it, the front door opened. Ma had returned from the local grocery store. My turncoat of a sister ran out of the room to inform her about my misadventure. Before I had the time to hide the evidence of my transgression, Ma was upon me.

The seamstress in me was exorcised, the destruction of an heirloom was rued and my kaftan was salvaged into a scarf and handed over to me.

I never used it though, it was never that cold in Bangalore.

***

I could visit Ma and Pa only when Rini had turned two. We were too scared to travel. But work had made us move to Mumbai. And it seemed too harsh to hold off grandparents from meeting their grandchild any longer.

Ma seemed to have aged faster in two years. Maybe because she had lost Grandma suddenly. Rini was the elixir she needed just then. She showered her with a cloudburst of tender love I had never experienced. She fed her every delicacy, applauded her every babble and played every game that was demanded of her. It made me feel jealous and guilty.

A week’s visit was coming to an end. By then Rini had explored and pulled out almost everything that was on offer under three feet. I never let her out of sight for long. But that afternoon, after a heavy lunch Ma had fed us, I had slipped into a nap on the couch.

A crash from the study woke me with a start. It took me a few seconds to realise where I was and where the sound came from. I rushed to the study.

A table cloth had been pulled down and that had made the table lamp smash into the open bookcase behind it. A handful of books and a few loose papers were scattered on the floor. Rini had moved on to studying the globe that had rolled down.

My groggy mind had to be reminded not to exorcise the explorer in her.

So, I lifted and placed her on a chair, a little distance from the scene of the accident. The globe kept her engaged momentarily as I proceeded to remedy the damage.

I steadied the lamp. No shards were falling out, only a couple of cracks in it. It will need to be replaced. Then I proceeded to pick up the contents of the bookcase fallen on the floor. It seemed an eclectic mix of long-forgotten things. A dictionary, a collection of poems, a couple of classics and a big spiral-bound album with a couple of loose photographs sticking out from it. I sighed; this was not the meticulously arranged study I had known. Maybe I should ask Ma and Pa to move in with us or get some help at least.

I wiped the dust off the books using the tablecloth. And tried to look for shelves to which they belonged. The loose photos slipped and fell.

Among others were a sepia photograph of grandma and grandpa with their brood and a photo mounted on a board with embossed borders and a butter paper cover. I flipped open the butter paper to uncover a breath-taking black and white portrait of a young Grandma, in a sari with black blooms, with fireflies in her eyes.

Taken a lifetime before it was turned into a kaftan, scarf or heart of a quilt.

I went to ask Ma whether I could take it with me.