All For Me?

Ms. B. Sivasankari

As Balaji returned home from school, the clock struck 4.30. Granny was busy gossiping with the lady next door. On seeing him she shouted, “Why are you late? O. K. Go wash your dusty hands and feet, take the dosais on the kitchen table and start studying....” As if her job was over, she resumed her conversa­tion with the neighbour from where she had left.

Irritated with Granny’s indifference, Balaji kicked his shoes out, tore his socks off his feet and threw the school bag along with them, into the verandah. Red with rage, he deliberately walked into the kitchen with his dirty feet and pushed a piece of dosai into his mouth. The dry dosai got stuck in his throat and he couldn’t eat any more. Hunger infuriated him further and leav­ing the plate on the floor, he came out shouting, “Paattiiii, dosai is hopeless. It is hard like a cardboard. How am I to eat it with dry sugar?”

Furious at being interrupted in her inter­esting conversation, Granny turned round and shouted louder.

“What! Did you ask how you are to eat it? With your mouth of course! Do I have to teach you even that? Look at this nine-year ­old boy’s cheek! Dosai is hopeless, I believe! How will dosai prepared be at two in the noon now! How can you expect it to be crisp and steaming hot! Do you expect me to prepare them once for you when you are from school, then for that great Queen, your mother, when she returns from office and then for your father? I can’t be preparing dosais umpteen times to please each one. Take it or leave it! Whatever it is......

When granny started shouting like this, Balaji knew she would never stop. He made his way to yard by the left side of the house, to escape her scalding tongue. He sat down on the edge of the cement tank there. The place felt hot because of the exposure to the scorching sun all through the day. The heat surged through the shorts to his thighs. A crow sitting on the thorny hedge squinted at him as it cawed its greeting with its grating one. Balaji bent down to pick up a pebble and aimed it at the crow. Although his aim misfired the crow sat there unperturbed by the passing pebble.

He felt ravenously hungry but the dosais were most unpalatable. Invariably they had dosais, idlis or upma fot tea. There was never a change in the menu in this god - forsaken house. In other houses there is such rich variety–poori-­potatoes, chapati-kurma, bhajias, idiappam and so many many different items! The very thought of the dishes made his mouth water.

Even today as be returned home with his friends, they stopped at the doorstep of Ganesh’s because he was in the thick of a heated discus­sion on cricket. On hearing his voice his mother rushed out immediately and said, “What are you doing Ganesh? I have made your favourite po­tato bondas. Come and have them hot, my son!” How she melted with affection! One must be born under extremely lucky stars for such good fortune.

They need not have variety in his house as in Ganesh’s. Couldn’t they at least provide some good side-dish to go with the idlis and dosais - ­say a chutney or a sambar? No hopes! Never, never do they give him even this basic fare!

If granny is no good at cooking, can’t mummy at least come home early and cook something tasty for him? But where is the chance? She reaches home only by 7 P.M. and there’s time just to get the cooker on for hot rice. As for the rest of the dinner they just warm the “left overs” of the morning and use them. When this has become a habit how can he ever hope for any variety!

“Mummy doesn’t love me at all,’ thought Balaji. If she did, wouldn’t she come home ear­lier? Perhaps, what granny says often is true. Blades of grass peeped out of the crack in the tank. He plucked one angrily out of its roots.

His fury rose higher as he remembered the insult and injury he had suffered a few days ago over insignificant groundnut balls. That day his friend had brought them from home; his mother’s preparation of course. He gave Balaji half a ball. It was so sweet and delicious that he wished they could be made for him at home. Then he could have not just half but even ten or as many as he liked, to his heart’s content. Foolishly hoping for the impossible, he approached granny with his request.

“What? Nut balls, eh? You want ME to make them, do you? You expect ME to buy the groundnuts, shell them, peel them, make jaggery syrup .... Oh ma! how can I do all that work by myself? What wonderful requests you do make! Isn’t it enough that your mother makes me work like a slave? Do you also have to add to the burden? Am I a servant for all of you? I break my slogging over your regular meals and you just stuff yourselves to your full and start picking holes! Why don’t you ask your DEAR MOTHER? But where will she find time for all this? She spends all her time in dressing and make-up, going to the office, flirting with her colleagues, going gallivanting, and chooses to return home late in the night! Thu! Why don’t you ask HER for nut balls and cane rolls?!”

As granny says, mummy does seem to have, time only for gallivanting. How well she pretends when she asks, “Had your dinner dear boy? Did you drink your milk? Only if you do, your body, will be strong and healthy!” All this is sheer, hypocrisy! Milk eh! Who wants this horrid milk! As if milk is the greatest thing in the world!

And look at this dad! Can’t he pull her up and insist that she look after me properly? But, again where has HE got the time for all that? Half the time he returns home only after I have gone to sleep. Even when he does return by 9 p.m. he listens to granny’s complaints against mummy. Then he’ll be out with his usual ques­tions: “Balaji, did you do your tests well? Have you completed your home-work? Shall I help you with it? You must concentrate fully on your studies. Get that” He would help me with the home-work and then go to sleep.

These people never ask me whether I played happily with my friends. Nor are they worried about what I had during meals. But they never ever forget to ask me about my studies. They just don’t care for me! They are not will­ing to satisfy my little little wishes and demands! Then why should I alone bother to study hard just to satisfy them?

“No! I will not study hereafter. I will not accept dry dosais. Let me see how they react. What CAN they do after all” Balaji sat up with pride and arrogance. He decided not to go in until someone took the trouble to come there and ask him in.

A black sparrow with a lengthy tail came and sat on the neem branch. Two squirrels ran squeaking. With their tails up. Balaji could feel the shadow of a person near him. He turned round It was the uncle who was visiting the family in the rear flat.

“Hullo”

“.......”

“Won’t you speak, my boy? Why are you seated here? Isn’t your name Balaji?”

The boy still kept quiet. The gentleman pulled him up gently to make him stand straight. Balaji stood up unwillingly. Somehow he felt rather ashamed to face that uncle. The previous day, when he shouted at his mother for not pol­ishing his dirty shoes, uncle had been watching him, standing by the Tulsi plant.

“Why aren’t you talking Balaji?”

“What am I to talk?”

Uncle smiled kindly.

“O. K. You needn’t talk if you don’t want to. Do you like chocolate eclairs? Shall I give you some?”

The thought of chocolates sent in a whiff of joy though him but he found it rather embarrassing to ask the gentleman. Uncle seemed to have sensed his embarrassment. He smiled, pulled out four éclairs from his pocket and of­fered them to Balaji. The boy shyly took one, peeled off the wrapper and pushed the sweet in to his mouth.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Which class are you in?”

“Fourth.”

“I see. Which school is it?”

“Sacred Heart Convent.”

“Very Good. That’s an excellent school. It is very difficult to get a seat there. Your par­ents must have been through a lot of trouble to get it. Right?”

Balaji wanted to say, ‘Trouble, my foot!’ But he simply curled his lips in contempt.

“Do any of your classmates live in our street? Why don’t you go and play with them?”

“Oh no! All the children here study only in the little thatched school at the end of the road. I am the only one studying in the convent.”

Uncle stroked the boy’s dishevelled hair.

“It is getting dark. Shall we go inside?”

“You go if you want to. I am not coming.”

Balaji turned round in a huff and sat up on the edge of the tank again. Uncle’s lips spread slightly in amusement at the boy’s fury. He joined the child at the tank edge. “Like another choco­late?”

“Thanks.” The child having got over his shyness, took one and popped it in to his mouth.

“There was a very delicious smell of crisp roasting dosais from your house. Did you have them?”

Balaji brought a grotesque frown to his face.

“Who ever will eat that kind of stuff!”

“So it was for the dosais that you bawled at your granny in the evening, was it?”

Balaji bent down his head and examined his nails.

“I’d like to talk to you, Balaji, just for a little while. I’ve been waiting just for this chance. Will you give me a hearing? Even if you don’t like it why don’t you listen to me, just for five minutes? Please...”

Balaji felt like shouting, ‘Nothing doing’ and running in to the house. But he remembered the chocolates. And the affectionate tone of uncle kept him .

Listen Balaji, both your parents go out to work and granny is alone at home then, isn’t she? She is also very old and weak and therefore cooks whatever she is able to. If granny does not prepare the dosais, you will have to go hungry till your mother returns, won’t you? Have you ever thought of that?”

“Why should I go hungry? If mummy re­turns early from the office, I ask you, why SHOULD I go hungry?”

“She can’t come early, my boy, because her job is such.” “As if it is such a big job. . . . Do you know what granny says daily?”

“Tell me.”

“Granny says, She is not even a gradu­ate. She has just completed school. Her six hundred rupees are a pittance for this family.” Uncle smiled. He ran his fingers through the child’s hair fondly.

“It is quite true that she is not highly quali­fied. But instead of wasting her time in idle talk like others, she is trying to earn whatever she can, isn’t she? You must remember that. Do you think a receptionist’s job is easy? What­ever the agonising problems in her heart, she must receive every visitor with a pleasing smile. She must answer the endless phone calls ami­ably and at times she has even to take charge as typist. We are at Saidapet and her office is far away in Royapuram. Do you know that? She has to change two buses to reach her office. By the time she gets the two connections to reach home, it is 7 p.m. How terribly tired she must be feeling when she returns! You MUST THINK of that, Balaji.”

As if I don’t know all this! I AM NOT asking her to go to work, am I? Does my friend Ganesh’s mother go to work? Why can’t mummy also stay at home like her?”

“Quite possible of course. Leave that for the present. Tell me why your father returns home only by 9 p.m.”

“......”

I’ll tell you. Your father’s a clerk in a small firm. Do you know that he is doing extra work as a typist in a lawyer’s office from 6 p.m.? It is only because he has taken up two jobs that he comes home late.”

“Let them take up ten more jobs if they want. What do I care? But nobody seems to bother about me in the least.”

“Why not! My dear child, both your parents slog so hard only for your sake, for you, their only darling child. Do they buy anything for themselves with this hard-earned money? Did you notice the number of holes in your father’s slippers? Instead of buying himself a new pair for fifty rupees he gets you a pair of shoes for ninety rupees. Remember you told me a while ago that all the children in this street study in the little thatched school at the end of the road? Why have they admitted you alone in that fa­mous convent school?”

Balaji blinked, Unable to reply uncle.

“Your parents wish to give you a good education and raise your social status in the future. They are not highly educated themselves. But they are putting forth their best, working as hard as they possibly can, to run the family. In their position, sending you to a convent school is itself a heavy burden. But do you know how they take it? They say, It is because we have not had proper EDUCATION, we are unable to prosper in life. Our son Balaji at least should get good education and come up in life. Even yesterday your father repeated this to me on his way home from work. They are striving very hard to give you something that they could not get in life. When compared with the bright future that awaits you, are the late arrivals and drysnacks so very important, Balaji?”

When uncle spoke firmly but calmly, Balaji felt as if somebody had suddenly lit a lamp in his heart. His head went down on its own and some­how he felt very sad and inclined to weep aloud. “You may wonder whether granny is ignorant of these problems. She is not ignorant but conser­vative. As she belongs to the old school of thought she is not able to accept the idea of women go­ing out to work for remuneration. She expresses her impotent rage by shouting. That’s all. More­over, since you go to school and your mother goes to work, granny feels lonely. Perhaps this loneliness and boredom make her shout so much. Whatever the reason, you must not take her so seriously. When your mother returns home ex­hausted, granny scolds her out of irritation. If you add to it by losing your temper over little things like dry dosais, won’t your mother feel hurt?

I need not tell you all this because you know it already. You are indeed an extraordinarily brilliant chap! But you see I was getting a little bored and I thought I might as well spend some time with you. I am leaving tomorrow morning. Will you come home if you come to Bangalore? Shall I give you my address?”

Uncle stood up with a smile as if nothing had happened. Patting Balaji affectionately on the shoulder he turned homewards. Balaji sat there silently for two whole minutes.

However he tried he couldn’t control the tears running down his cheeks. He felt like eat­ing the dry dosais, washing his face and finishing his home work quietly before mummy arrived.

‘Thanks a lot, uncle’ he said softly to the uncle who could not have heard him at that distance. As he stood up to get inside home, there was a fresh enthusiasm and vigour in his gait.

Translated from Tamil by

S. Sulochana Rengachari