Missed Call

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Written by Sourav Roy
Wednesday, 10 October 2007

Last Updated ( Sunday, 04 May 2008 )

Thirteen missed calls. And it has not been thirteen minutes yet.

And here the phone goes shrieking the fourteenth time.

“Hello!” He tried to sound casual, and almost succeeded.

In answer, he heard heavy breathing and a voice on the verge of tears. “Beta, are you alright?”

“What will happen to me Ma? I was just taking a bath.” It took every ounce of his self-control not to shout.

“Well I have been calling and calling and calling and then told your dad to call from his cellphone too. And you were not picking up. What a fright you gave me! And what kind of time is three o’ clock to take a bath?”

At one breath, she has gone from pointless worry to needless accusation to righteous anger.

He swallowed his helpless rage and steered the conversation to its daily cycle. He knew the drill too well and the fact that he could never win.

It has always been like this - pointless, crippling worry for her only son. If she didn’t get through his phone, it was never a dead battery or network problem or silent mode. It had to be a terrible accident where his son was lying spread-eagled in a vast pool of blood, exactly the same amount she lost when she almost bled to death trying to give birth to him.

Being half a world away from her only worsened matters. ‘Empty Nest Syndrome’, the pop psychologists piped up. He begged to differ. The times when he obediently flew back to his nest every evening, things have been no better. Losing track of time in a game of football or buttering up a girl to smoothen his chances or missing the regular bus has always successfully petrified his mother with the omens of sure doom. While it used to end in yells, stinging slaps and his tears before, it has turned into pleadings, hurting chests and her sobs now. But the hysteria was, is and will be. When he was no longer young enough to be beaten up, he used to take perverse pleasure in getting intentionally late and even now, it seems a good idea sometimes.

He knew he was her only success in child-bearing and in life, a glorious exception in an assembly line of miscarriages and mishaps - including her marriage. Her mother-in-law often said, “Dear, women should be like milk. They should be able to adjust in any vessel they are kept.” And adjusted she well, thanks to her husband pouring cold water all over her dreams and ambitions, her self-identity was drained out of the way successfully through the kitchen sink. But was he guilty in any way in all this? So why was he being punished?

Having been denied and then made to forget how to live for herself, she did the second best thing. Living a proxy life for her son. The only thing that had held some hopeful future. Oh the reflected glory of being a mother! Oh the sweet joy of being complemented on her son’s every achievement! Oh the deep, deep satisfaction of bringing up a son who earned an obscene amount of money in a city obscenely far away from her own. And what more does she need? Just to get her calls answered before she got worried. The constant, nagging worry of losing everything else she had after making peace with losing herself.

“Why don’t you get your own life, Ma? Now that dad is retired and I am not there, you should have all the time in the world. Start your Sitar classes again, meet up old friends, join a book club or something? Instead of this constant worrying about us?” He would say.

“How beta? It’s difficult for me to step out of home even to do shopping! You know how your dad gets cranky if I am not home for long. He can’t do anything for himself, can’t find anything on his own and will always order me around. And now after his retirement, he is always home, na?” That was or some such was always her reply.

And he would usually give up on that thread of conversation saying, “Women of your generation will never learn to live for themselves. You are all stuffed up with sacrifice and self-denial.” And left all that at that.

“Maybe because we can not, that’s why you can.” She would mouth silently after hanging up the phone.

So when one man in her life continued to neglect her, because that was the manly thing to do, unlike the modern cuckolds, she turned to the only other man in her life. She called him to unload her daily domestic frustrations, she called him to narrate the rare joys of meeting up her sisters, she called to ask whether he had eaten, she called to show that she cared; she called to be cared for. After all, being listened to is a therapy in itself, as any self-respecting psychiatrist’s couch will agree.

The less and less he needed her; the more and more she called him. And before he could get worried, lonely or just bored enough to call her, she called him back. She ran to him like a teary-eyed little girl, every time life gave her fresh cuts and bruises, complaining how life has never treated her fair.

Thankfully, he was a patient man and listening to complaints from the other half of the globe was part of his job description. And unlike others, this specific caller never demanded that her problems to be taken care of immediately. She was just obliged to get through the line and get a couple of ‘hmm’s and ‘huh’s. Life went on as usual like a pre-programmed chaos, people from across the globe and in his office making him feel important till his phone shrieked late one night. The voice that came out of it was unusually calm and the sentence unexpectedly clipped. “Beta come home. Your father has just passed away.”

After all the duties were done and everything came back to, well, normal, for he was never too fond of the man, he asked Ma to come with her. She, of course, refused. And he didn’t force her much. He was getting late for his flight. And in this age of budget airlines and bargain-price airtimes, Geography is History, as he too often said in his client presentations. Last time he looked back, her face was like a mask of stone. “The white Sari is making her look so pale”, he said to himself.

“Poor thing!”, he thought, as he munched his bacon approvingly on air, after a long spell of bland vegetarian food. “She doesn’t know how to live for herself and her world is now half-empty.” While he was sipping his juice, a thought struck him. I should have told her, “If you need me Ma, I will come back and work here.” Not coming up with that line while leaving was quite stupid of him. But she had always put his wellbeing before her own. She would have never wanted that anyway. “Poor thing! If only she had more options is life. But thankfully I am there for her.” Getting his conscience cleared, he drifted off to sleep.

But as it turned out, having no options is sometimes better than having too many. Getting rid of her only two options to live life at one blow made her look back to another which she had long abandoned. She grabbed all his son’s advices as passionately as if he meant them. While her son was still asleep, she resolved to restart her Sitar classes. And by the time he was a week into his life as usual, she had dug up old college girlfriends and finally, joined a book club. Her phone calls became happier and surprisingly, shorter. Because, you know, her book club is going for a picnic and there is a meeting about the menu. Or, oh, she had to practice a difficult piece on Sitar before she goes for the class in the evening. It was good to see her happy, but if you asked him, it was a little disconcerting to see her so happy so soon after dad’s death. Well, he was never close to him either but she was the one married to him for thirty years, remember?

And look at this today, it’s almost three and she has not yet called. Doesn’t she know he has been waiting for the call? And it’s quiet worrisome, you know, she is old, alone and so far away. Finally, he decided to call instead. Wonderful, she is not even picking up! At the fourteenth try, she picked up and in a maddeningly casual voice, said, “What? I was just taking a long bath. This new bath salt your aunt got me is just so amazing…”