The Day When the Sun Was Brighter Than Ever
On a sticky June morning, when the sun is brighter than ever, I hold onto my mother’s free hand as we make our way through streets lined with people, vehicles, cattle, more people. Turning left into a narrow opening, she follows the herd (of people, not cattle) armed with cloth bags and an iron will. Welcoming us into the heart of the Sunday vegetable market is a natural carpet of discarded fruit and vegetable peels. Ma looks determined, as does everyone else; they have only a couple of hours to bag their produce before the heat becomes stifling. I follow her as she makes her rounds– to one vendor then the next– thoroughly inspecting mounds of blood-red tomatoes and velvet aubergines and fleshy mangoes with surgeon-like precision. About thirty minutes into the process, she returns to her usual vendors, haggles inflated prices down and bags her bounty. Satisfied, she allows herself a break, sitting on a wooden bench as we sip on chilled glasses of freshly squeezed sugarcane juice.
This is not the first time I’ve come here. Back when I was much shorter than the mounds of blood-red tomatoes and velvet aubergines and fleshy mangoes, Ma would pry me from the clutches of sleep every Sunday morning to accompany her to the market. I would cry and protest only for her to leave me defenseless with the question, “Do you want your mother to walk around with heavy bags all day?” Yes, I would think; No, I would act.
The rhythmic slapping of her rubber flip-flops would momentarily pause as her sneakers– preserved carefully in their original packaging– now graced the scene. After securing her own laces, Ma, oblivious to feeble protests, would promptly turn her attention to mine. It was only recently that I had relinquished the juvenile convenience of the Velcro, insisting on doing my own laces; as if the independence I so desperately craved hinged on that singular act. But there was no room for coming-of-age rites-of-passage on Sunday market mornings. One bunny ear, one more bunny ear, cross the middle. One bunny ear, one more bunny ear, cross the middle.
And so began this Sunday tradition, a pilgrimage of sorts, with tied laces and braided hair, from the back of an Alto 800 that cruised through the indifferent lanes of Deolali. It is a curious corner of the world, this town. Once a pitstop for British soldiers voyaging back home during the Raj, it lends its name to the slang ‘doolally’, signifying a state of temporary madness. It was, after all, the anticipation of departure that drove these soldiers to the brink of insanity.
I was born here. My mother was born here. Her mother was born here. Crazy, is it not?
Back then–when I was much shorter than the mounds of blood-red tomatoes and velvet aubergines and fleshy mangoes–our pilgrimage would not end at the juice stall, much like today. No, we would gather ourselves and move onward to the fish market. As we drew closer, the air would thicken with a briny sharpness; a metallic tang interrupted only by the floral swirls of incense used to ward off flies. After half an hour of lugging bags of vegetables under the searing heat, I couldn’t help but find the smell less than inviting. And even though before me lay shades of silver and pink on beds of glimmering ice as far as the eye could see, I’d pause in my step before entering.
“Ma, I think I’ll stay here.”
She’d walk on, without making a fuss, expecting me to play the dutiful custodian. Wiping the sweat from my brow with an embroidered handkerchief, I’d watch her merge with the madding crowd. I did not know my mother back then. She was my father’s wife. A mother I shared equally with a brother and a Labrador puppy. I knew she’d wake up before me and go to bed sometime after I did. I knew she loved napping in the afternoon after cleaning up the kitchen. Or that she was addicted to playing the Temple Run video game as she waited for the pressure cooker to hum its familiar tune. Or that her evenings were usually spent at a dining table that doubled as a study, flanked by my brother and me and our books. I did not know my mother back then. Not the way I do now.
I didn’t like it when people asked me what she did. With twelve years of schooling, a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree, a brief stint in banking, and a sincerity like no other, my mother was, much to my disappointment, a housewife. She didn’t earn a salary, never fully committed to learning driving, and didn’t have very many friends to visit even if she could drive. Her lack of independence grated on me, leaving me questioning my identity as her daughter. In school, I would write about the strong, self-sufficient woman of the twenty-first century, knowing deep inside that my mother epitomized her antithesis. I was deeply grateful, yet deeply embarrassed all the same. The irony was not lost on me—the idea of one woman relinquishing her independence in order to foster it in another. Often, when I ponder my own future, I wonder if I too, must face this seemingly inevitable trade-off at the altar of motherhood. And despite my mother’s insistence that she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, funnily enough, I’m quite sure she wouldn’t want me following in her footsteps.
Now that I don’t live with my mother I am uncomfortably surprised by how much of her lives within me; almost as if I carried a piece of her while navigating my way out of her womb, a dormant piece that was clandestinely tucked away and resurfaces now when I least expect it, despite all my resistance. Perhaps it is the subtle twitch of my face, mirroring hers, when engrossed in discussions of notable gossip. Or maybe it is the resemblance in the way I pass on that gossip, echoing her annoying habit of embellishing the dramatic points and mimicking the exact tone of our source. Even though I’ll now settle for an iced mocha latte, there is nothing quite as gratifying as three cups of chai a day. The thought of sitting down to solve a crossword puzzle with a cup of chai, just as she did, terrifies me. Or the way I’ll absentmindedly tear at the skin of my lips. My tolerance for spice matches hers, despite the fact that my eyes and nose water a little more profusely. My eyes, nose, lips and every other feature too were hers first; unmistakably discernible in a sepia photograph from a time when she too thought the world a playground and her mother its warden.
The sun is almost at its zenith now. Habitually accustomed to my aversion to the fish market, Ma strides ahead with practiced ease, dropping on the ground beside me cloth bags that have expanded to accommodate their organic contents. From where I stand, I can hear the fishmongers shout their wares, each one of them indecipherable over the next one’s calls. Today’s offerings are plentiful– tiger prawns, mackerels, eels, rays, hilsa, crabs–all fresh catch from the Arabian sea waiting to find their way to a scarlet broth, or a crisp batter, perhaps even the comfort of a banana leaf. I watch her retreating form, my eyes fixed on the first strands of gray that stand out against her jet black hair. Soon she’ll vanish amidst the thronging masses, becoming a mere specter to me.
If all goes as it normally would, she’ll return in another half hour, with thin polythene bags of gelatinous, pungent Bombay duck (which is, ironically, a fish) in one hand and half a kilogram of silver-white mackerel in the other. We’ll trace our steps back out of the market and load the car’s boot with the day’s ruins. Back at home, Ma will marinate the mackerels in salt and turmeric while the chai brews and I’ll stand under the cold shower. When I’m out, I’ll hear the loud sputter of sizzling oil as the first mackerel makes contact with it while Ma will tell me to close all doors lest a stray cat finds its way to our dinner.
Ma’s figure continues shrinking as she goes further into the market. Today– the day when the sun is brighter than ever– she doesn’t merge with the masses but stands out, defying the usual anonymity of the market crowd. With a sense of urgency, I pick up the strewn cloth bags and call after her.
“Ma! Wait! I’m coming.”
GOURI MEHRA is a budding writer from New Delhi, India, whose experiences growing up across different parts of the country deeply influence her storytelling. Currently a sophomore at Dartmouth College, she is pursuing Economics and Mathematics while nurturing her innate passion for writing. Balancing her love for words with the rigor of problem sets and quizzes, she draws inspiration from the works of Jhumpa Lahiri. She is nineteen years old.
