A Christmas Awakening

Christmas was round the corner. Very few places in the city looked as glittering and promising as Park Street. Standing behind the window of the bedroom of her posh quarters, Shruti felt a lump in her throat. The old woman loved her, the wife of her only son, dearly. Yet, Shruti was not sure why she had been quite mean to the withered woman right from the first day she stepped in the inlaws’ as ‘a daughter' like the widow went out of her way to make her daughter-in-law believe.

By the time Shruti was eighteen, she was already turning heads. Her mother, Dola would always tell her not to make the same mistake that she did due to her parents' insistence. Dola wanted to be a dancer but her marriage with Rudra dashed all her hopes. She had to be the “home maker” for the rest of her life. Shruti's birth a year after Dola’s marriage ensured that Dola's dream never materialised.

One day, when Shruti was working behind the cash counter in a bank, Manoj, a dashing entrepreneur, while waiting in the queue before the counter, cast a longing look at the pretty cashier inside the cubicle. Cupid did the rest. It was love at first sight. When the marriage proposal came along, though Dola was initially against the marriage, she finally saw a lot of benefits for her daughter in this alliance.

The marriage was a grand affair. As the newly-weds were getting into the decorated car, Dola took her daughter aside and asked:

“Is what I heard from Manoj today true? The fact that you’ll be sleeping in the same room with Manoj's ailing mother? I haven't heard of anything more preposterous in my life! How can you share the same room with that creepy woman? Doesn't she feel ashamed?"

Knowing her mother well, Shruti could only reply:

"We'll move into a new house soon… . "

No sooner did she utter those words than Dola hissed out, "I should have gone around in their locality making some enquiries before fixing your wedding. Who'd have thought of a grown-up man sleeping with his mother?" She stopped before taunting her daughter, "Are you all going to sleep in the same bed as well?"

To cut a long story short, true to her words, Shruti moved into a new house, soon after her marriage leaving Manoj's widowed mother helpless and heartbroken. She couldn't digest the fact that her only child held her responsible for their shift to another house. Poor woman, she passed away a couple of months afterwards.

Hardly a year passed when Rudra, Shruti’s father breathed his last as well due to a massive stroke. It was that night itself when Manoj asked his widowed mother-in-law, Dola to sell her house at New Town and move to Manoj's at Park Street.

Dola had no other option. She did as bid. She declined all requests of sleeping in the same room with her daughter and son-in-law though and decided to stay in the adjacent room in the corner.

One night Manoj had hardly retired to bed when he heard a thud, as if someone had fallen down somewhere. Soon, Manoj was scampering out to the room next. On entering, he found Dola lying unconscious on the floor with a deep cut on her forehead.

“I’m not going to take ‘No’ for an answer anymore. We don't want to lose you, Ma.”

All Dola’s excuses proved lame as Manoj forced her into shifting to their room the very next day. He already had an extra bed arranged there.

"Ma, I won't listen to your rubbish any more. You're not young any more. Think how relieved Shruti will be."

His earnest pleas did the trick. Dola sheepishly moved into their room, proving once again that if one doesn't mind one's words, one has to eat her words in the end!

That Christmas night standing near the window, looking at the beautifully illuminated buildings, festoons and banners all around, Shruti, looking back at her mother's shadowy figure in bed, felt deeply remorseful. For the first time in her life, she felt sorry for the way she had treated her aged mother-in-law. She realized what it meant to have someone nearby when one is old, infirm and ailing.

The end

Rathindra Nath Bhattacharjee, more popularly known as RNB to his students and colleagues, is a retired English Teacher from Bhutan Civil Service and former Principal of St. Xavier's Public School, Joypur. Published extensively in magazines both national and international, his novels have recently been published by ZobraBooks and are available on Amazon.in. A recipient of the Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Teaching from His Majesty, the 5th hereditary Monarch of Bhutan, Rathin Bhattacharjee is a writer, blogger, podcaster, editor, translator and an avid reader.