Why I like my real life… coz the fake one could have been chillingly real: By Raji M Chacko

My parents were good people. I was brought up to be a good boy. And now 30 years later I am paying the price.

That was how my stream of thought was flowing as we waited at the traffic light. Me, my good wife behind me, leaning against me after a day of shopping at the mall, thus pushing me further forward on the bike on which I was hunched over at an awkward angle to ensure that my chin didn’t bang against my good son’s head.  

I was ‘settled’. At least, by my parents’ standard, I was. I had all the elements of ‘settlement’ ticked off on their list. Good job (so what if I was stagnating in the post of manager and felt like I was riding a merry-go-round in slow motion each day), a good wife (of course, they would think so, they had picked her. I am not saying she isn’t good, only that a woman who is obsessed with shopping and television serials isn’t a very interesting companion), a boy to carry on the family name (only is the name worth carrying forward and must I sacrifice the 20 best years of my life merely to ensure that the name of my father, who hasn’t done a thing worth mentioning in his life, isn’t forgotten 60 years down the line and in the process wean a complete brat to turn 30 someday and rue his existence.)  

But in my mind, which rattled like a box with dice in it after having banged against the rather hard head of my heir, I was completely ‘unsettled’.  

I woke up each morning, to be greeted by the same newspaper and weak, watery tea and a woman who looked harassed because she thought the role of wife demanded it — for heaven’s sake, there was a maid who came in each morning to cook and clean. All my ‘darling’ had to do was wake me and the boy up, serve breakfast and usher the boy to speed through his morning tasks so he could catch the school bus, the woman had no excuse for looking harassed. 

If work was enjoyable, life would have been slightly more bearable. But working as floor manager of the women’s wear section, meant dealing with more women — women with 38-inch waists who tried desperately to fit into 36-inch skirts and then called for the manager to complain because the brands the store was stocking were all wrong since they had always managed to fit into 36-inch skirts, women who dragged along short-tempered husbands who yelled at the female shop assistants who then cried and whom I had to offer tea and a kind ear, women who… ah well.  

And then on my way home, I had to stop at my parents’ place where mom would start off on how I looked thin and wasn’t my wife feeding me anything (wasn’t she the perfect woman you picked for me, mom?), how although they didn’t ask for my money to run the house, I didn’t seem to have enough money to buy a new pair of his shoes (muddy from a bike ride on the city’s roads) simply because that spendthrift of a wife of mine was wasting my hard-earned money on her whims (again: your choice mom), how my brother’s wife was expecting again and wasn’t I thinking of giving my son a little brother or sister (one, begetting kids didn’t seem like a competition I wanted to enrol for and two, that selfish brat of mine had never asked for a brother or a sister with whom he would have to share his worldly goods).  

Then, home to where my wife would take one look at my face and ask why I had to meet my mother everyday when she harried me so. Of course, she would say, your mother must have had something nasty to say about me, she always does. Has she forgotten that I bought four tolas in gold as dowry, while your bhabhi got only two and my father gave us this flat, while bhabhi and bhaiya are still living with your mom and dad, but since he is the older son, your mom cannot see any fault in his wife. She keeps getting herself pregnant and has a dozen people to care for her while I have to run around doing housework. She is only SSC passed. I am a BCom. I could have worked and made so much money, but I gave it all up to look after you and what thanks do I get. When she says these things about me, do you ever tell her to shut up…. 

(I have wondered what it would be like to have been homosexual or even sexless. There are too many women in my life.) 

My son was supposed to be my solace. But from the time he kept me up at night changing his diapers and cramping my arms swinging him to sleep, I have not been able to find the s of solace in his presence. Now aged six, his favourite line begins with Daddy, I want…. And his wants seem to keep increasing in proportion with his age. He has a tutor to teach him and I wouldn’t be in that poor chap’s shoes for all the wealth in this world. I feel the prophetic spirit come upon me — I can see that in another 10 years, I will need to pay a lot of people to convince them to let my son enter their prestigious medical college. I hope my father-in-law’s many tolas will come in handy then.   

I know my life is disintegrating, I am falling apart, but I am stuck like the reflection in a cracked mirror, like the man on the shore who feels each wave sweep away some of the sand from under his feet but who knows he won’t drown soon, not soon enough at least. I know no other life. I know no other manner of living. I know I am lost but there are no signboards and there are no maps and there is no one to direct me. I am sinking in the quicksand of my life and contrary to its name, the bloody thing is taking it’s time.       

 

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