Free The Private Life of Mrs Sharma by Ratika Kapur

breathing. Then, in my strictest voice,I told Bobby to wait outside, but he just stood behind me and refused to move. I looked up at a picture of Ganeshji above the door to steady myself.
    I had thought that I would see a fat old man with a fat stomach in a vest and pyjamas, with henna-coloured hair and paan-stained teeth. That is what TV does to you. But instead of that what stood in front of me was a slim man who seemed to be about my husband’s age, dressed in a baby pink shirt and grey pants, a balding man with metal-framed spectacles, who only had to wear a white coat to look like a lab technician in a doctor’s office. I looked up at Ganeshji again, and then I turned to the man and spat on his face.
    Bobby, who was standing behind me, caught my hand. I shook him off. And the man standing in front of me? He just took a folded white handkerchief out of the pocket of his pants, unfolded it, gently wiped my spit off his chin, folded it again and put it on the counter. Then he smiled.
    Madamji, he said, looking not actually at me, but at some point behind me, at my son maybe. Madamji, what can I do for you?
    I could not speak.
    Madamji, you won’t find what you are looking for over here.
    I turned to Bobby, who looked like he was just going to cry, then I turned back to the man.
    Madamji, he said, now looking up at Ganeshji’s picture. Madamji, as a mother you pay not only for your own sins, but also for the sins of your child. And then he just left the room.
    I tried my level best to stand steady, I closed my eyes and tried to do some deep breathing again, but all that I breathedin was that horrible, horrible smell of chemicals and shit. I turned again to Bobby. His eyes were now filled with tears.
    When we walked out of the shop I felt the June sun attack my bones. It seemed that the anger that I had felt all these days had slowly burnt through my skin, burnt through my flesh, so that the June sun could attack my bare bones directly. Now, thirteen hours after the visit to that shop, my bones still feel that same heat.

    As a mother you not only pay for your own sins, but you also pay for the sins of your child. How dare he say such things? How dare such an animal say such things? What does a criminal know about being a mother? What does a man know about being a mother? And what do they even mean, those stupid words? How can one person pay for the sins committed by another person? And why only the mother? Sharma Sahib, where are you? You were supposed to spend a month with us every year. Come back just now! Come back and take control of your son. Come back and pay for his sins. But what do you even know of your son’s sins? Oh, my Bobby, you say. Oh, my poor Bobby. Oh, my sweet and studious Bobby. What do you know of your sinful son?

    Many times when I am walking in the market or standing in a crowded train compartment, basically, whenever I am surrounded by a lot of people, I think about how each andevery one of these people has or has had a mother, and then I think of all the hours, all the days and nights, all the years that are spent looking after children, and it seems that my head is going to burst. Such a lot of time! Such a lot of care! I wonder if anybody has ever bothered to think that if there are six billion people on this earth, and each and every one of them has a mother, dead or alive, what the total time spent would be on caring for others, on caring and compromise and sacrifice. I am sure that if anybody actually bothered to make such a calculation, that person’s head would also burst.
    Obviously there are those mothers who have easy lives. There are those mothers like my mother who were let off from their duties very early or mothers like Doctor Sahib’s wife, modern maharanis, who have one ayah to feed their children, one ayah to clean their noses, one ayah to clean their shit, and what not. But then that is how the world is.

    It is night-time. Papaji and Mummyji are sleeping in the hall, and