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Rhea was right, I wasn’t ready.

“Ma, please don’t worry, she is ok. It’s almost not visible, don’t worry Ma,” Rhea kept saying, even though I had not asked her. Ina had gone to meet some friends she said, and even though I had kept stalling, asking about everything else, Rhea knew what I wanted to know. Or maybe what I didn’t want to now, what I was not prepared for, not yet anyways. Children of a certain age think they have to protect their parents from emotional and physical distress, not knowing a lifetime of life had prepared them, hardened them. Maybe we never know either, when in the eyes of the children the roles are reversed from the protected to the protector. But he knew that whatever happened, no parent could for a moment stop worrying about their child. He knew that I wished that I could always keep my children under my wings, away from all harm. But I was not sure I had strength anymore. I was not sure he had it either. I had seen him wither away in the last few months, and he was left a mere skeleton of the man he once was. He was in the other room, pretending to read, and despite all his bravado I knew he was a crushed man.

Tomorrow was Shasti, the first day of Durga Pujo. The sound of the Dhak was still coming from the Pandal outside even though it was already after ten. The local boys had just brought in the idols of Ma Durga, and her four children, gods and goddesses in their own right, a couple of hours before. The Bodhon Pujo including the unveiling of the face of the idol would happen tomorrow, but now the women of the housing complex were decorating the idols, and more noise meant more excitement, and thus more community participation. The noise had been so loud, that I had hardly been able to hear Rhea on the phone, calling from the Bombay airport, where she had gone to pick up Ina. I had never thought about the noise before, and the fact that the Pandal was less than a hundred feet from our front door, the proximity having been one of the reasons for having the Pujo in the front grounds of the housing complex originally. We had moved to the Kanchenjunga housing complex, which had apartments for about four hundred families, our first home, after renting for our entire lives, a little more than three years back. The Pujo that first year had required a huge effort from me, directing all the efforts, almost like I was the headmistress again at my school in Jamshedpur, given that there were less than fifty families which were living in the complex then. He had helped too; “Always happy to help Mrs. Sarkar,” he would say, referring to me by the moniker he had given me early in our marriage, partially out of love and partially in mock respect. Last year I had been one of those women decorating Ma Durga, not minding the ear shattering Dhak, right next to me, wanting to make sure Ina enjoyed that Pujo, before leaving for America, not sure when she would get to see a Pujo next. Now, when Ina was coming back after a year, during Pujo, I was not sure if I even wanted her here at this time, during Pujo, when the house would be full of the ever meddling relatives.

Rhea and Ina would take the morning flight tomorrow and get here around eleven, and then the jackals would attack. Everyone would be dripping with concern for her well being, full of ever helpful suggestions and advice for her future. Mrs Bagchi next door had said last year I should get Ina married before letting her go to a foreign country. My in-laws had said the same thing. The cacophony had increased through the year, and now that she was going to be here, I am sure it would rise to a crescendo. Had I been the same way about others’ daughters, or their sons, without realizing it? Maybe I had been, maybe what I had considered concern for others, had gone beyond inquisitive curiosity. Maybe his sister, Ina’s Bodo Pishi, who now seemed downright callous and insensitive to our feelings, our problems, our utter helplessness, had once been me, interfering in someone else’s problems. But my attempt to rationalize, trying to understand everyone’s point of view or trying to decipher their intentions would not help Ina. My little girl would be here in a few hours, and I would be as powerless to protect her from these society’s busybodies, as I had been in protecting her from the affliction that ailed her. When Rhea had called from the airport, I had not asked Rhea about it, but she had known what was own my mind, what was foremost on my mind every day now. I had looked at the photographs Ina had sent for the Homeopathic doctor, but they were close-ups of various parts of the body, and after a glance I had not been able to look. I was not sure what I would do tomorrow.

I had grown up as the eldest of five sisters and a brother, children of wealthy parents in Jamshedpur, who had not given up their quest for a son, till they had finally succeeded, after five consecutive attempts. I was not sure what effect that had on me, or what that had done for my self esteem, but I had never been second in class, excelled in debating and at athletics, completed my Masters in English when few women in that small town even graduated from college. In five years I had become the headmistress of a local secondary school, continued even after I was married to him, a manager in the local Tata Steel Mills, and a man I married despite my parents’ disapproval, or maybe because of it. Then Ina had been born, and even though he had never asked me to quit, with Ina in my arms I had felt as if my purpose in life had changed, that I did not need to prove to anything anymore. When I had held Ina in my arms for the first time, twenty nine years ago, I had thought I would never let her go, do everything in my power to make sure she would never have to through a moment of pain, an iota of suffering. Now in some ways I felt I had been faking, somehow my feelings had not been genuine, or I had not tried hard enough for what was a part of my very being. I had resolved to shelter her from all suffering, and at this, her greatest hour of trial, I had succumbed, I had given up. What a phony I was.

She had called early one morning in January, only a few months after she had moved to America, and told us what the doctor had said. We had never heard of it, and though we had seen people affected with, we did not know what it was called. Initially it had been a few patches, which had quickly grown. In some ways he had taken it much worse than me. When I had first met him, as a guest in a family marriage, he had been rough and boisterous with a tough exterior which was always on display, but a soft underbelly which was hardly ever evident. Being in a household with three women had softened him, and despite the fact that there were perpetual playful skirmishes in the Sarkar household, we the women always got the better of him. Ina more than anyone held sway over him. She had ruled over him, when on finding out, he had wanted her to take next flight back to India for treatment, or when, after her refusal, he had wanted to take the next flight to Philadelphia. After Ina told him that several dermatologists in America had said that there was no cure and not even any known causes that had been conclusively proven, he had not given up and consulted every skin specialist he could find in India. He had consulted even Homeophathic doctors, Ayurvedic specialists, Acupuncturists, all leading him to the conclusion that over time, with Homeopathic or Ayuvedic medicines, the marks would reduce and eventually might go away. But there was no magic bullet, no conclusive cure any amount of money could buy. At some point during the exercise of running around the country, he had given up, and it had not just been on finding a cure, but the feeling of failure went deeper, and permeated every aspect of his life. He had taken a leave of absence from work for a few months when he had traveled to meet the doctors, but now it was a struggle every day to get him to go for work. I was not sure whether I wanted him pottering about the house all the time either, but I did feel one of these evenings he would say, “Mrs Sarkar,” with the zing missing in his voice, “Maybe I should retire at the end of this year. What do you think?”

Rhea had moved to Bombay this summer and the empty house just added to the gloom. When Rhea was at home I could hear her talking to Ina, discussing what she was going through. I suspected they never shared much with me. I had never been the mother who had frowned upon boy friends and in the past when Ina had believed she was pulling wool over my eyes, while in college in Calcutta or when she was working in Bangalore, I’d always had a sense of what was going on. I knew it when she would go for lengthy tuition lessons, sometimes seven days a week; and I would know it as well when something had gone wrong and she would hardly eat for days on end. I knew it when she had fainted from fasting for days, and even when it broke my heart to see her like that I had not asked her anything, preferring to give her the privacy and freedom my parents had never given me. But when Rhea moved I was left without even knowing those scraps of overheard conversations. For the first time in my life I had been forced to ask Ina about what she was planning, what she was thinking of doing. I was not sure what I was expecting her to answer, what I had wanted her to do, but perhaps it was my feeble attempt to distract her from worrying constantly if she would ever get better. Every conversation we had, I would not be able to help myself, and I would repeatedly ask her if she had been taking her medicines, as if there was nothing else to talk about. So I felt her plans were maybe something else to talk about. But even that was not much of a conversation either, as she refused to discuss anything, saying, rightfully so, what was it that I wanted her or expected her to do. It hadn’t helped that I had said that she should think about marriage; let us know if she had someone in mind. I had thought in offering her the option of choosing her own life partner, besides the default traditional India option of an arranged marriage, I was being open and broad minded. But she did not see it that way, both options seemed farfetched to her, she said. But I had pressed, why were they not possible, why couldn’t she think about them, or make an effort. But I had been stopped dead in my tracks with a single statement, my blood turning cold at the thought that the same daughter, who I had held in my arms and had resolved to give my life to protect, would one day be helpless enough to utter the words, “But who would love me Ma, in this condition, who would love me.”

The Dhak had finally stopped beating. We had had dinner in silence, and lay next to each other in bed, both of us awake for a long time, not saying anything. We had run out of things to say to each other. We had moved beyond the pretence of saying that everything would be alright, or the pretence of breathless action to find something, anything, which would correct this situation. We could not let Ina see through the sense of defeat in our eyes, but it was not as if we were doing a good job of hiding my sense of being enveloped in perpetual gloom either. Besides going to work for him and occasionally to get groceries in my case, we had hardly left the house in the last few months. We used to be fairly active in entertaining guests or relatives at home, would go for a trip or two every year to Darjeeling, Sikkim or Bhutan, but all that had stopped. We hadn’t gone anywhere for sightseeing since Ina had left. He seemed to have aged a decade in the last year, and I had little interest in taking care of myself as well. Eventually Ina found out and she raised hell. From then on every conversation had been about Ina wanting us to go somewhere, or inviting people home and we would always assure her we would, knowing fully well we could not bring ourselves to do those things. Relatives would call, wonder what was going on, eventually ask about Ina’s marriage and lately even Rhea’s marriage, and then give up at our monosyllabic answers and hang up. But it wouldn’t stop, as a few days later someone else would call, maybe some old friends of his or mine, and ask the same questions. We were bordering on being rude to our friends and relatives, but we were beyond caring.

It was Ina’s visit that was bothering me. I knew three generations of Sarkar’s would descend on the house tomorrow when Ina got here, and we would not be able to stop them. I was not sure how I would react to their incessant questioning, or how would Ina be able to bear them, while at the same time not sharing what was truly going on. She had had been certain on that score. She did not want anyone to know. But beyond the questions I was more worried about seeing Ina. The pictures could not prepare me for what I would possibly see tomorrow. I had imagined this a thousand times, thinking about how I would be able to face Ina, thinking about how it might look. What it would have done to my beautiful little girl, my little daughter. I kept going over and over in my head, thinking about how Ina would react, of what she would say, of what I would say, of how strong I would be in front of her, on seeing her. Would I be able to keep up the sham, the façade? Would I be able to say, my dear daughter, everything is going to be alright. She knew, and I knew there was nothing to be done. There was nothing I could do, for my daughter that I had promised to protect with my life. There was nothing but a phony life to live, to pretend that what was real, wasn’t. To hope what might never change, would. Or would I be strong enough to say to my daughter, my flesh, be strong, fight everything that comes your way, let nothing defeat you. As I began to doze of, I was not sure I believed it in my own heart. But tomorrow, I would have to believe, for myself and for Ina.