Tiwari's Mother

Tiwari’s mother By C Y Gopinath

Everything I know about Tiwari’s mother is hearsay. Once during the three months that she stayed in our house, she addressed me, but I could not understand her dialect. After some minutes, she broke down sobbing. I stood there, like a hare pinned in a floodlight. Couldn’t understand her predicament, nor her words, nor her plea. It only struck me later that Tiwari’s mother was not the kind of woman who pleaded. You have to picture a face out of an Anjolie Ela Menon painting, gaunt, with an unwavering gaze haunted by an ineffable dignity. You might be reminded of cats, full of secrets and tragedy and yet perfectly poised in any weather. In our house, she slept on a thin cotton cloth spread out a bare, cold mosaic floor, didn’t seem to need anything more. I tiptoed into that room once at about 1:30 in the morning to hang out my washed clothes, but she was too light a sleeper. To my embarrassment, she shot up and till I left stayed that way, face averted, eyes downcast, sari cowled over her head, swaying slightly from sleep. In her way of life, a woman loses dignity if she lies down in the presence of a man. There was a man, back in Dodi village, Madhya Pradesh, who had not understood that dignity in all the years he knew her. Tiwari’s mother had been married to him when she was a stripling adolescent. Nothing can be gathered about him except through his aftermath — eight children, seven male and one female that he sired on her. Tiwari Shivmurat was the youngest. One day, the strangulated man who was her husband announced that he was leaving in search of his soul, to live in sanyas in some forest. As to how Tiwari’s mother and her progeny would survive in his wake, nothing was said. There was some land, there was suspected to be a God, and if nothing worked out, there was a Destiny. Years passed. Tiwari’s mother created a space in her heart for her absent husband, assuring herself that he would return one day at the end of his incomprehensible quest. But the man was never heard of again, and finally, even the hope she clung on to grew faint. One day she went to the riverbank and smashed her bangles againts a rock, and performed a little ceremony for the dead. From then, she dressed as widows do, and deemed her missing husband a soul lost in transit.

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Other souls were lost in transit. Five of her sons died of various diseases of childhood for which there were neither medicines in Dodi nor money for medicines. Her only daughter was married away to a distant husband, for better or, more probably, worse. Not knowing who would strike next, God or Destiny, Tiwari’s mother hoarded her surviving kin. Tiwari was good-looking, full of attractive arrogance, and easy to fight with or be fond of, but the elder one was already getting that glazed look that foretold only a dreadful dependence of cannabis. His earnings from a provision store were dispensed entirely to a drug peddler. Tiwari’s mother herself earned the bleakest of livings by walking door to door grinding wheat into flour where that was needed. In return she would get a little money and a commission of flour, enough to keep her dwindling family somewhat fed and clothed. Tiwari, fuelled by poverty and ambition, left to seek a better life in Bombay. Just before his departure, perhaps to ensure his return, Tiwari’s mother arranged his marriage to an adolescent girl from a nearby village. Tiwari did not meet her except at the engagement ceremony: he had Bombay, not brides, on his mind. Tiwari died in Bombay, after several months as a chowkidar in my building. During his time there, I heard, he became buddy to a wealthy young man. They went driving, one night, and towards 2:30 am, their car drove into the dark back of a parked truck. The car’s owner survived, as the rich always do, but Tiwari suffered a deep cerebral hemorrhage and went into a coma. He died without recovering in the intensive care unit of a nearby hospital. Two strangers showed up, distantly related, they said, to claim his corpse and attend to the last rites. They took the ashes home in an urn to Tiwari’s mother. I imagine she cried yet another time and then somehow found a way to look this new bereavement in the eye. Some weeks later, she received a message saying that she should go to Bombay: apparently she was entitled to legal recompense from the Accidents Tribunal, and the amount could be several lakhs of rupees. For the first time in her life, Tiwari’s mother left Dodi. While some building residents helped with her paperwork, she stayed as a guest in our house. I can tell you very little more about her. Her cheeks gained some colour and substance during her time in Bombay, and she smiled a little oftener. However, as word spread of the imminent end of her poverty, scavengers began to gather, mostly villagers she had never heard of, who now traced a complex blood link to her and solicitously offered to manage her money and her affairs. Growing alarmed, we warned her; someone tried to impart a functional literacy to her, so that she at least had a signature to fight with. At the Accidents Tribunal, more predators gathered, creatures in black who offered to make her rich on her son’s remains, though strictly on a commission basis. Finally, someone found her an honest advocate. My two dogs loved her, for she had much unclaimed love to give. Whenever they came cringing towards her, twitching to be petted, that was when we would see her smile. What else? She made very fine chapatis for herself, soft as wishes and perfectly round, and once she made a few for us. Frequently, we would see her silently crying, wiping her tears with the edge of her sari. Finally, when her case was registered at the Tribunal, she left for Dodi.

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The rest is also hearsay. While she was away, her only surviving son apparently sold away everything in the hut, paying for drugs with the proceeds. Tiwari’s mother is sitting today in a completely empty hut in the bitter Madhya Pradesh winter. I don’t think she has anyone left to care for. The Tribunal money is due, will come, but I wonder if it matters at all to her. If she has anything left to cover the ruins, it will be that sourceless dignity. And perhaps, now, a shaky signature.