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Our women Fridays
by Farah Mehreen Ahmad
illustration by Shibu Kumer Shill
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PART II
4
Lamia stood next to her mother Nasrin, watching her fry vegetable pakoras. She always felt that the way her mother fried the pakoras was a direct reflection of the way she delegated their upbringing, and other household functions in general. Unlike other kitchens, their kitchen never delivered mixed pakoras. At their house, mixed pakoras meant a variety of individually fried vegetables on the same platter, with the same chutney. She thought this was symbolic of the way their mother valued and nurtured everyone from her father to her sister individually, but under the same uncompromising domestic order, uncustomised at the face of individual needs – each fried in the same batter.
‘Broccoli and cauliflower aren’t exactly poe-tay-toh, poe-tah-toe even if they are from the same family,’ Lamia angrily pronounced to herself.
Lamia always felt that her mother was a lost potential. She did not know exactly what her potential was (though there must have been one by virtue of being human), but now she was nothing but a case lost to intolerable mundaneness. She thought the only thing exciting about her mother was the difference in the aroma of each of her culinary delights. Even the mystery quotient on that was pretty low since they were directly out of her frayed recipe journal – instructions absolutely untampered with, and impeccably followed word-for-word. Another doctrine saluted.
Little did she know that Nasrin was once not only a young bride of a much older gentleman, but was also an aspiring romance novelist of the distastefully appetising genre. Like herself, the heroine of her first and only secret novel had ‘the fissure of her dimpled buttocks of her innocence whipped by the pangs of her lover’s masculinity;’ that like her, the heroine had ‘cracked her multi-coloured glass bangles to make vivid little fragments of kaleidoscope to view different morsels of her life with.’
What made Lamia queasy about her mother the most was how no site on her mind-slate was blank. She was a woman of many suspicions and few illustrations.
Lamia always informed her mother of her whereabouts beforehand. But when she returned home, her mother would invariably ask her where she went, who she was with, etc. She addressed those queries with a lot of apprehension because she felt her mother was not asking out of forgetfulness or curiosity, but cross-examining her out of suspicion of mendacity and misinformation.
She found her mother’s interest in her to be very selective and condescending.
She wanted to believe that she was being paranoid, but that questions (especially those of her mother’s), were meant to confirm pre-conceived notions instead of filling up a scrap of tabula rasa, felt more like an intuition.
5
It is true that all food, particularly rice and curries taste better when not eaten with cutleries. But the task of getting rid of turmeric sediments from nail-beds after a meal is quite laborious. Lamia cringed at the thought of touching her books with those fingers, so she scrubbed her fingers with soap as if seeking vendetta against her cuticles. The scrubbing got even more rigorous because the residue of the lunchtime conversation lingered to her fingers.
She felt this way after every Friday lunch at her house. What made her sceptical about these family conversations was how everyone echoed each other’s one-track mindedness. The monotony of pseudo-analysis was more extended than the family members strewn across different corners of their living room. She was convinced she was adopted. The hilarious myth of her being picked up from a dumpster hoarded more plausibility every Friday.
One of the recurring topics of discussion was the miracles of God. This Friday people gushed over balance in God’s games. God’s benevolence was exemplified with ‘tsk tsk’ remorse over the death of an elderly relative two years ago, which was shortly followed by her cousin’s pregnancy. Such blanket statements of balance are very eerie and unnerving to her.
She wondered why the rage against such undesired losses only surfaced as a tease, especially since news of one death is generally followed by a few more. She was embarrassed at the oversight of simultaneous deaths every time; the domino effect on grave-digging. One pregnancy cannot balance that out. Why did the surprise visit of the stork overshadow the laziness of Azrail? It seemed to her that Azrail convinced God to waiver the multiple-trip memo, and lapped up a few souls every time he visited the neighbourhood. When it shits, it really does diarrhoea. Or for good measure, when it rains, it really does pour.
She felt lonely in her battle against the rage of unacceptance. What bothered her the most was how she could not explain her unacceptance of the acceptance of others; how she could not fathom the physical paradox of death. As far as she knew, cold preserves. But when bodies grow cold, it is a sign of internal rotting. She cringed at the realisation of this bluff; at how frozen bodies corroded in their cold storage. What she cringed at the most, was the crude phrasing of this thought.
6
Tanisha decided to have some fun with puns before she rolled out of bed that day. ‘I’ll take some pun-i-tive actions today,’ she thought, and curled up to a foetal position, paralysed with breathless laughter for a good five minutes. When she finally gathered herself, she remembered that she had invited a few of her friends over for a ‘Hello Kitty Party.’
She had often heard her mother and her neighbourhood friends speak tartly of the kitty party subculture of the elite women – late afternoon meetings of an unproductive club, harping on about jewellery and other people’s marital hiccups, and occasionally loosening their Tk 35,000 sari strings to make a Tk 3500 donation to self-validation in the name of breast cancer research.
‘I wish I could cure these headaches guised as women with paracetamol,’ Tanisha had heard her mother coon to one of her friends over a late afternoon tea-session. And there! She had gotten her idea for a seating arrangement for her ‘Hello Kitty Party’ sans ‘Hello Kitty’ paraphernalia. She and her kitty friends would say ‘hello’ to each other and take seats on paralleling chairs. Yes, she would para-sit-‘em-all.
She explained her idea to Lamia and asked for her help in setting up. Lamia took a pensive look at their living room and started walking around it, stopping on spots for placing chairs that would enable Tanisha to materialise her dream design.
‘There…and there…aaaannnd theeeere…aaannndd there….,’ she marched in slow motion with extremely long strides, as if playing ‘Twister for the Inflexible.’
Having completed their arrangement, the two sisters stood on the coffee table they had removed to a side of the room, aligned with the couches framing the design for their anticipated congregation like a moat.
‘There and there, yet a square. I think the outer square is engulfing the inner parallels.’
‘Well Tanisha, this is the best we can do. Squares are, after all, a set of parallel lines put together. One way or another, a parallel seating arrangement would put you guys in a square or any other form of parallelogram.’
‘Yeah, I don’t have the time to rearrange the place anyway. I have to help mom fry the kitty-shaped potatoes, then…’
‘Where did you get those?’ Lamia interrupted.
‘Mom got them from somewhere. It’s by Silky Foods.’
And they both roared in laughter. Catching her breath, Tanisha remembered decorations were still pending.
‘Do we have candy sprinkles?’ she asked Lamia.
‘I don’t think so, why?’
‘I want to sprinkle those all over the living room to add some life.’
‘Sweet life for ants and roaches you mean. Are you crazy? I have a few sheets of poster paper that you can cut up to make confetti out of. You want them?’
‘No, either sprinkles or nothing. Well maybe baby spiders…’ she said smirking as her eyeballs elevated diagonally, ‘…confetti in fretful motion: confretti!
‘It’s ironic how you never have what you want. For your birthday party you wanted confetti and there was none, but there were boxes of sprinkles for the cake. And now it’s the reverse.’
‘10,000 spoons when you need a knife isn’t exactly an irony, it’s sheer misfortune.’
On that note, Tanisha exited the building. Living room rather.
Farah Mehreen Ahmad is working with BRAC Overseas and is also a freelance consultant Comments: ahmad.farahm@gmail.com
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