Women Eat Their Hunger for Lunch

Tania Banerjee, India

"I often picture myself living on a mountain top, in the most stormy country (not the coldest) in the world. Is there such a place? If there is I shall go to it someday and turn my heart into pictures and poems."

This excerpt is from one of Kahlil Gibran's letters, dated 1st March, 1914. I have always hunted for a reason for three things in this world: how in the same world, in the same year, here was Gibran writing this and there was the First World War about to begin; how my grandparents loved each other like they were seventeen; and how Maa finds the will to send me good-morning messages on WhatsApp at exactly nine every day with images of unknown children.

Maa does not realize that the space in my smartphone is limited, like the pyres in this city during the pandemic. She messaged me last week, "Look, Pakhi, I found your old diary while cleaning the cupboard. It had these words by Agha Shahid Ali, 'It rains as I write this. Mad heart, be
brave.' Oh, and I learned to make your favourite Chinese food yesterday. Come home and see, I make it better than those restaurants that burn craters in your pockets. It's been so long since you've come home. If not for me, come for the Crispy Babycorn at least?" Two laughing
emoticons followed her message. Strangely, as I read this, I terribly missed her Kanda Poha. Maa learned it from my Nani and guards the recipe with all her life.

Nani still lives in the hills, makes her own food and experiments with her spices now and then. After my grandfather passed away, we urged her to stay back in Kolkata. But she would not listen. That's the thing about Nani; she always knew what she wanted. Her old age, husband's
death, more medical bills, nothing could change her mind. She went back to her home in Darjeeling. I asked her one day, 'Why won't you stay, Nani?'

She smiled at me, "As long as that home lives, that bed gets made every night, the kettle is washed every morning, your grandfather lives. I cannot abandon him after all these years. I married him when I was eighteen. He was transferred to Darjeeling two years after our marriage.
I was pregnant with your Baba at that time. I made my home there, from the scratch."

'But weren't you lonely there? Nana must've been at work in the library during the day.'

"Yes, he was. And I was lonely. But when your Baba was two years old, I started making sweaters. I'd knit these sweaters every afternoon, taking sips of chai and bites of onion fritters in between. At the end of the month, I gave them away to a local store that sold them to tourists."

'And how did you spend that money?'

"I would buy movie tickets for myself and your Nana. I'd surprise him. He would be back from the library, take off his coat, wash his face and sit on the armchair. The old brown one, in our living room in Darjeeling, you remember?"

I couldn't remember, but I nodded.

"He'd sit there and the first thing he asked was, 'How was your day, Monimala?' Just then, I'd walk up to him and say, "Was thinking of going to the movies." He would ask, 'Oh, but the ticket?' Back in those days, there was only one movie hall nearby and the ticket queue was quite
long in the evening. You had to stand for half an hour. The easier way was to collect your ticket in the morning. I would smile like a child, flash the two tiny tickets and his face would cheer up. All the day's tiredness would just be wiped off from his face at once. We'd have lunch together as usual, and then leave the house for the movie hall. When he fell very sick during his last days, I asked him, "Why would you be surprised every time I'd tell you about the tickets? You must've been able to guess after a few times. And your face would glow up, so I knew you weren't
pretending to be surprised." He touched my palms and gently said to me, 'Moni, I wasn't pretending. But my face would glow up not for the tickets. I knew you got them beforehand. But when you flashed them before my eyes, your eyes would light up and looking at you then, my
heart would be the happiest. That's the secret of the glow.' And now, after all these years, those movie tickets, some torn and some faded, sleep safely inside my almirah. I open it once in a while, run my wrinkled palms over the frail paper. You know why I do this, Pakhi? I do this to
remember the touch of those old tickets."

'But why do you have to remember them? You can just open your almirah and take out the tickets when you want to.'

"Well, old people go through strange things sometimes, my child. The thing is, our sense of touch diminishes with age and we all lose touch receptors slowly over the course of life. I will, you will, your Maa and Baba, everyone will. When they're old, very old. Don't worry, it's a long
time from now," she laughed.

'Is it really true, Nani? I never thought I could lose my sense of touch.'

"Sometimes, you think that there is this one thing that you can never lose. You know it so well that you don't ever question it or think about it. You're used to its presence. And then, one day, it's just gone."

'What if I lose you someday, Nani? I don't want to live in a world where you aren't there. I don't think I can...'

"Silly girl," she smiled. "Life goes on, and you, you've got a long life ahead of you. So many dreams, so many things to do. You think you'll have a life like mine? Never! You'll grow up, and you'll have your own pennies. Not to buy tickets for your man. You'll study, study a lot, get a
good job and earn. Just for yourself. You won't spend the day waiting for someone to return home and then sit to eat. You'll buy a good table someday, you'll eat your own food, whenever you want. You'll not wait. And I want that for every woman in the future. I want that for you,
you understand? I don't want you to spend your whole life in the kitchen."

Recalling this old conversation, the first thought that touched my mind was Maa. Her kitchen. Maa chopping onions and potatoes for Kanda Poha in her kitchen. I could strangely recall the smell of the mustard and green chillies all at once. Meanwhile, my own palms reeked of sanitizer
as my fingers swiped my six-inch screen to find a message from Maa. Touch was a distant memory now and I finally realized the urgency in Nani's palms; trying to grab all that she can, trying to remember, to save, to hold on to, to live. I understood Nani's hunger to remember, I
understood Nani's loneliness.

It was thirty-three minutes past nine and there was no good-morning message from Maa. An hour ago, I had read in the newspaper about a man from Kolkata who sang 'Tera Mujhse Hai Pehle Ka Nata Koi' through a video call to his dying mother in the COVID ward. I read about a
girl who jumped into the burning pyre of her father because she was not allowed to touch his body after the virus took his life. I left Maa fourteen angry messages and ten phone calls.

Suddenly, my phone vibrated.

"What happened? I was watering your Gulmohar tree. Good morning, my Pakhi."

'Nothing, Maa. Good morning.'

"Someone is turning into her annoying mother. Half an hour late and I get flooded with all these texts?"

I broke into tears and whispered to myself, "Mad heart, be brave, mad heart, be brave."

'The lockdown here ends tomorrow. I'm coming home, Maa. I'm trying this week. I have to get the tickets.'

"Ah, at last! Come soon. What do you want to eat? I'll make some Kanda Poha for you."

This is the mother I grew up watching. I grew up watching her cook for everyone but no one ever asked her, "What do you want to eat today?"

Her kitchen reminds me of a poem where a lampseller sells lamps throughout the day and returns to a home of pitch darkness.

'I'll come soon, Maa. As soon as I can. Listen, there's something I want to ask you.'

"Yes, Pakhi?"

'Have you, have you eaten, Maa?'

"Hmm, I have. Why, suddenly?"

'Have you eaten well?'

"Uh, yes, I did. Why are you asking this?"

'No, I was just thinking about how Nani once told me about her hunger. How she waited to eat her lunch. And I just, I realized that I never felt hunger in my own house. Because of you. You never let it happen. You always made sure I ate well, and I never even asked you if you were
hungry. No one asked you, Maa.'

"Pakhi, are you crying? Listen to me, you were a child. You did nothing wrong, baby."

'No, I did. And the day you made Murg Handi with a little less salt, I remember how I screamed at you. God, I was such a rotten teenager.'

"It was years ago, I don't even remember any of it now."

'No, but I shouldn't have. And we should've asked you what you like to eat, what you want.'

"You know what I really want? I want women in the future to never know hunger. Because women like me, they don't enter the world with just a vagina in between their legs, they come with hunger stored into the pit of their stomach as well. But now I eat. I really do."

'I don't know if you do, Maa. I'm so far away.'

"No, my child. Don't worry about me. You just come home soon, okay?"

After booking a ticket to Kolkata, I wrote down Nani's Kanda Poha recipe; whatever bits I could recollect. When I returned home, I made Maa a plate of Kanda Poha and as I squeezed a lemon on it, she gently squeezed my palms. My mother, my tired mother, with the hunger of a hundred years, sat at the table. She ate; she ate without children crying around her, without worrying about her husband's office lunch, without the milkman knocking at the door, without anyone reaching for a bite from her plate. My mother ate like she was on the mountain top Gibran wrote about during the war, like she was turning her heart into pictures and poems. I buried my teary face in her soft cotton saree and asked,

'Maa, was the salt okay?'

Tania is an undergraduate student of English Literature from Kolkata, India. She is greatly drawn towards feminist and confessional poetry. She believes that art has the potential to change the world and she's on her mission, one day at a time, one poem at a time. She loves big books and all dogs in the world.