'A Pack Of Lies' - गौरीच्या मुलीचं पुस्तक

घेणार पुस्तक. माझं गौरीवर प्रेम होतं. आहे. पण मुलांना वाढविताना आपला फोकस त्यांच्यावरच असावा लागतो. कालच मी माझ्या आवडीच्या तीन स्क्रिप्टस लिहायची ऑफर नाकारली कारण मुलगी व भाची घरी सुटटीसाठी आहेत व माझया वेळावर त्यांचा हक्क आहे आतातरी. त्या मोठ्या होताहेत तसे मला नैसर्गिक रीत्या इग्नोअर करत आहेत ते मला आवड्ते. व असे छोटे छोटे स्वातंत्र्याचे घुट्के मजेत घेते पण once you are a parent it is a 24 x 7 x 365 job with no thank you speeches. When the kids are happy and grown up and have their independent lives without you the job is well done.

I had written to Gauri when she was in Spain and she had replied with long beautiful letters and photos ( pre internet) Cannot forget her kindness and understanding to a stranger like me.

बी ने मागे हे आर्टीकल मायबोलीवर टाकलं होतं वाटतं. मी अगदी २-३ आठवड्यांपूर्वी इंटरनेटवर हाच लेख वाचला होता. तेव्हा लिंक सेव्ह केली नव्हती याची रुखरुख वाटत होती. आज स्वातीसाठी म्हणून परत लिंक शोधताना मायबोलीवरच सापडला धन्यवाद बी...
हा लेख बर्‍याच जणांनी वाचलेला असण्याची शक्यता आहे. तसा बराच जुना आहे.

Aai
Umi Deshpande

It has been over a year since my Aai died. I sit here in the early morning light, the house all quiet, no sound but the drip of the coffee machine. I think how her Khandu is so grown up, almost as tall as she was, with his long curly hair, his beautiful brown eyes, his kindness and calm, I think of how he will play his saxophone, fall in love, come home with a girl who might have her great-grandchildren. I miss her. I miss turning to her as we sip our coffee (mine sweet and white, hers black and bitter) and saying, "So! What do you think?"

I miss showing her the pages of my book that come flying out after midnight when everyone is in bed, fed and fussed over. She would have said, "Go sleep now, stupid girl!" ("Moorkha mulgi, zopee ja, kiti usheer zhalay!")

And, the cat drags in a cardinal, beautiful red feathers, black bandit eyes, and I am disgusted, its still twitching, bloody, and she will stroke the cat's head and say, "what a clever cat, what a good fellow!"

Aai. I think sometimes how quickly I have recovered from her death. But I know that what I have recovered from is the shock. From the actual going of her, the way she fell ill, the hospital in that frozen foreign place, the weakness, the helplessness of her, so alien to how her life had been. The first months after I came back home, that's all I thought about. Images of her as I had last seen her, dying, had taken up all my head space. And then, human healing, one day to the next, those images were replaced by memories of our life together, our good times and bad. Of when we got along and didn't, when we talked about everything and dogs, when we played card games and word games (she beat us all every time), and we rowed and we got hysterical. Memories of walking with her. Those thousands of steps we took together. Down the cobblestone lanes of Dubrovnik with my brand new Saheli, looking up at ancient walls covered in rambling roses smelling so sweet we got high. Through tiny winding back alleys in Kyoto searching for some temple that she just had to show us, but wouldn't ask for directions, striding ahead, tall and impatient, Saheli now old enough to whine, dragging her feet, me between the two of them trying not to lose either, both of them trying to lose each other. Korea, winter still hanging on, garlic smelling people, small dogs in cages ("don't look now, and stop crying, silly girl…" but I saw the dismay in her eyes). Hong Kong: clothes markets, bird markets, vegetable markets, antiques markets, me pregnant with Khandu, hoping, no, convinced it was a girl, the one I would walk with when my Aai wasn't there to walk with me, Aai preventing me from buying all the pink frilly things I tried to ("idiot girl! What if it's a boy? It is possible, you know!"). Spain: Cordoba, Sevilla, Cadiz, Tarifa. Saheli now old enough to have a boyfriend, not walking with us, Khandu who turned out not to be a girl, whining age, me pregnant again, full of hope that our line would continue this time. She loved Spain best of all. We walked on the beaches of the impossible blue Spanish Atlantic, in the old towns, she evoked other times for me, Moors walked with us. And then California. Oh she loved California. We didn't walk so much, I had my driver licence, I drove her everywhere. And she was so thrilled with me that I had learned to drive. (She delighted me by calling me a "clever girl!" which she had never done when I was actually a girl). We drove out to Santa Barbara and took a cruise to look at California grey whales. That was one time she was speechless with awe. She just held my hand, and we watched that perfect tail fluke as the sun set palely in the Pacific, the absolute end of that day anywhere in the world. Vinchurni: walk to Babulal's to bring the milk. Try to get home before the sunset. But we never did, because she would stop to listen to larksong, look at lapwings, the sky, some microscopic flower ("all right, we won't call it a flower, we'll call it a spray!"), the five-o'clock snake (really, there was a snake that we saw every day that summer, she said he was going home after a hard day's work.) And everywhere, she showed me things I would have missed. An old woman in the shadows, cats on rooftops (the pink cat in Hong Kong- pink from mange. Which made us laugh hysterically and sad at the same time), gorgeous men in Spain. Smells she had such a sensitive nose .. it was a blessing sometimes and a curse sometimes. "Can't you smell that?" and when we all said no, she would translate the smell into words, and we could smell it. She could translate everything into words. And then finally, we walked together in the hospital corridors, and she would stop when she was tired and we would discuss the intricacies of the collages on the walls. And when she was too weak and tired to take even those walks with me, she just sat up on the bed and pointed out the parakeets on the electric lines outside, and the jacarandas blooming, whisper quiet purple, I would have missed them entirely if she hadn't shown them to me. She gave us adventures, stories to tell. Our imaginations grew, she fertilised them.

She didn't always know or care if we had had dinner, or if our homework was done. But she knew our hearts were in the right place, because she had put them in the right place. She made us all. Not just me, and Saheli, and Mithoo. Everyone. Surindar, Ashish; she called him "god's fool", Khandu, who I overheard proudly telling a friend, "my grandmother calls me a shitty bastard!" he heard the love and admiration rather than the words, Vithoo, who at seven, had a bond with her that excluded all of us, who has more of her in him than any of us other children or grandchildren and who was heartbroken when she was gone ; he had started walking with her in California, he says she told him the homeless lady on the corner was not someone to be afraid of, and they would walk to the grocery store and buy Margarita mix or tonic for her gin. He still drinks tonic water in her memory. He didn't judge her, I suppose, he loved her unconditionally.

Now I have a new kind of pain. Not of death, not from old memories. This is different. This is of what could have been. Of what should have been. Not in a large general way, like we could have changed things; or 'she should be here'. This is more specific, more painful. I have begun to see precisely where she should have been. I see her absence in exact places, tiny perforations in the fabric of my life letting in the light of reason, of inevitability. More and more holes, until, I suppose, the fabric is all gone, and my life joins hers.

She had a light touch on our lives, if I look at in terms of the actual time she spent with each of us sisters. She made a huge fuss about my move to California, she blamed Ashish for taking me away. She would let me have it every time we spoke, which was at least twice a week. She wanted me to come back "home". I listened patiently for a couple of years, even internalising some of the guilt. Finally I pointed out to her that she herself was in Korea, and even when I had moved from Bombay to Pune to be near her, she was hardly ever there. To which she said, "that's not the point." But to me, that was the point. She was my "home". Not the country, the city, or even Vinchurni. It was she.

I live in a Christian town. Friends point out that one must be thankful for what one has. I am, for the most part. Not, perhaps to the God they want me to be thankful to, but I am thankful for the small everyday things, thankful that I see them, appreciate them. The things I may have missed had Aai not taught me, by the way she lived, to look at. The things I wish she was here to see. Cardinals, red as strawberries, in the Spanish-moss laden oak trees. Canada geese, down south for our warm winters. Alligators, drifting, log quiet and mind still in the opaque green rivers of Wakulla county. Manatees, those cement coloured balloons, floating just beneath the water's surface, brushing our oars. Great blue herons (Aai had a special love for these), with their imperious arrogance. I see all this through her eyes. I think I know how she might have responded to these little things. But Aai never made it here, she never saw North Florida. So I don't really know. And then, with her, one never knew. She always had a new view, a surprise in store for you that might delight or horrify you. That's gone. I feel like water that has lost its vessel, scattering in drops and in disarray. I feel like I have a giant hole in me that I must grow to fill in. I guess that's what she meant when she said to me, "You are never really, truly an adult until your mother is dead." And I said to her, "then I'll just stay a child." And she, "idiot child!"

Its time to grow up then. And to grow my own conscience from the seeds she planted in me. To trust my own instincts and my own mind. Just because I can't call her doesn't mean she isn't there right? Existence isn't tied to life, Aai, because I see you in us all.

किती प्रेमाने, अभिमानाने लिहिलंय!! वाचता वाचता आवंढा दाटून आला!!

Existence isn't tied to life>> काय वाक्य आहे . उमी ला पुलेशु.

मीही वाचेन हे पुस्तकं! धन्यवाद शर्मिला.

अंजली, 'आई'चा मराठी अनुवाद (की वरचा हा खरा अनुवाद? ) आहे एका पुस्तकात.

बी, अंजली, हा आई लेख इथे दिल्याबद्दल धन्स! वाचताना डोळे कधी भरून आले ते कळलेच नाही!

खरंय.. भरुन आलं वाचताना.. शेवटच्या तीन ओळी फक्त गौरीचीच मुलगी लिहू शकते अशा!

मस्त परिक्षण

धन्यवाद शर्मिला.

>> but I am thankful for the small everyday things, thankful that I see them, appreciate them. The things I may have missed had Aai not taught me, by the way she lived, to look at.

>> tiny perforations in the fabric of my life letting in the light of reason, of inevitability. More and more holes, until, I suppose, the fabric is all gone, and my life joins hers.

>> "You are never really, truly an adult until your mother is dead."

'सुरेख लिहिलंय' असं म्हणवत नाही, कारण त्यात थोडासा क्राफ्टचा भाग सूचित होतो.
हे जे आहे ते अमेझिंग आहे!

धन्यवाद, अंजली.

शर्मिला, अ‍ॅमेझॉनवरून ऑर्डर केलं काल - थँक्स टू यू!

काय सुरेख लिहिलय. दोनदा वाचुन काढल. आवडल एकदम.

http://urmilladeshpande.com/

उर्मीची साईट. तिथेच तिचा ब्लॉग पण आहे. किती आईसारखी दिसते ती .....

Thank you for this... I guess I can't say you enjoyed my book - but I am touched that you thought so deeply about it. A book belongs to each and every person who reads it. I had not understood that until I began to hear from the readers of my book. It is a beautiful thing! Sharmila, you should translate this review and put it on Amazon - no one has, as far as I know, talked about my mother's writing in the context of mine or vice versa. Thank you again. (Sorry this is in English)

उमि,
मायबोलीवर स्वागत

Thank you! My computer is not set up for Marathi... but I am delighted to be here - I got this link this morning from a comment on my website. It is a bit strange to be among fans of Aai - I wish she could have seen the things written and felt about her, she would have been quite thrilled, and would have pretended she didn't care at all what anyone thought.

Sharmila, do please write to me on email, I would love to talk more...

शर्मिला, छान रसग्रहण.

माझ्या मते 'उमि' ह्यांना मराठी फाँट वाचता येतोय पण मराठीत लिहिता येत नाहिये. त्यामुळे तुम्ही पोस्ट मराठीत लिहू शकता.

उमि, चक्क इथे! इतका आनंद झाला तुला वाचून.

इथे गौरींबद्दलही वाचकांनी खूप खूप लिहिलं आहे. नंतर शोधून सर्व लिंक देतो.

'B' ~ I read a lot of the discussions right after my mother's death - someone had sent me a link then... it was quite strange to read it all, and somehow comforting to share that side of her, one I had not really known much, with so many people out there...

I loved reading Sharmila's thoughts, by the way, and all these comments too!
My second book will be out soon - maybe July - and it is nothing like POL.

I must again apologize for my lack of Marathi - to be honest, it's not just that I can't quite figure out how to do this on my computer - it's also that it isn't my first language - I went to all English schools, had parents who were (besides Aai) non- Marathi speaking, married a non-Marathi speaker, and lived ten years in Tallahassee - where I may be the only Marathi speaker in the whole town of 200,000!

उमि,
ईंगजीबद्दल काही हरकत नाही. इथे येऊन तुझ्या मराठीत भर पडेल हे नक्की सांगतो. वाचता वाचता तुलाही मराठीमधे लिहायला आवडेल.. जमेल. इथे बरेच जण १० अधिक वर्ष परदेशात राहत असलेले आहेत. मायबोलीमुळे मराठी भाषेशी मला संबंध ठेवता येत आहे.

तुला एक विचारु का - शशी देशपांडे 'एकेक...' चा अनुवाद करणार होत्या. तो झालाय का?

Shashi has translated "Nirgathi" already.In fact it was because of her interest in my writing that I got published at all - she put me in touch with Westland Tranquebar - and they took my finished novel - which will be published now, and also asked me to write POL which I had not really thought of as a novel until my editor pointed out that I had that book in me!
Shashi completed the translation a while ago, as far as I know it should be available soon - http://www.womenunlimited.net/authors/authors_g1.htm

http://www.womenunlimited.net/catalogue/fiction_17.htm

उमि, स्वागत आणि माहितीबद्दल धन्यवाद.
त्या वेबसाईटवर बरीच इन्टरेस्टिन्ग माहिती आणि पुस्तके आहेत.

उमि, ती लिंक मस्त आहे. धन्यवाद. अनुवादीत अरेबिअन नाईट खूप शोधले पण आता ते आउट ऑफ प्रिंट झाले आहे. विंचूर्णीला जाऊन वाचावे लागेल गौरींच्या कपाटामधून ते पुस्तक काढून.

बी, अरे पार्ल्यातल्या मॅजेस्टीकमधे चौकशी कर पुढच्या वेळेस. त्यांच्याकडून अरेबियन नाईट्स नक्की मिळेल.

.....

शर्मिला
उर्मिला माझीही आवडती मॉडेल होती आणि गौरीची सगळे पुस्तकं वाचली आहेत. परिक्षण छान आहे. पुस्तक आणावेच लागेल.

मला पण मागवलंच पाहिजे हे पुस्तक !

खूप छान परिचय !!!

शर्मिला, पुस्तक वाचून संपवलं.
अजिबातच आवडलं नाही. कॉन्टेन्ट आवडला नाही, शैली आवडली नाही, म्हटलं तर आत्मकथन - म्हटलं तर 'ती मी नव्हेच' अशा प्रकारचा संधीसाधू स्टँड आवडला नाही. दारूण अपेक्षाभंग.

'नको इतकं स्वातंत्र्य लादलं जाणं' इ. सुद्धा हे लेखन वाचल्यावर अगदीच गौण वाटलं. कादंबरीची नायिका/निवेदिका ADHD किंवा तत्सम विकाराने पीडित मुलगी असावी असं वाटतं. तथाकथित 'नॉर्मल' घरात वाढली असती तरी तिचं काही निराळं झालं असतं असं वाटत नाही. अर्थात एकदा ती मानसिकदृष्ट्या कमकुवतच आहे हे मान्य केलं तर ती आईवर किंवा जे 'सॉफ्ट टार्गेट' सापडेल त्यावर त्याचं खापर फोडेल यात नवलही नाही.

पुस्तकात एका ठिकाणी तिची आई तिला 'liar and amoral' म्हणते. पुस्तक वाचल्यावर माझंही या व्यक्तीबाबत नेमकं हेच मत झालं. पुस्तकाचं नाव त्या अर्थी चपखल वाटलं.