Mmm.

When I was very young thakurma used to make me stand erect next to the dining table and under her severe appraisal and with the help of the dining table’s height, she would inform me how taller I had grown. Then she would pull me onto her lap and tell me sadly that I needed to fatten up. These scrawny arms! She would exclaim. I never grew fatter.

Today when I stand next to the dining table as my steadily withering thakurma slowly eats her food; it comes to me suddenly how thin she has grown. She is now a skeleton of her formal portly self. She squints at me with her hands shading her eyes when I speak to her. She still laments how thin I am.

Once, when I was six years old, thakurma had an operation. She had to go and stay there for a week. When I used to come back from school, she would always be there. Now I was supposed to go to a nearby jethi’s place after school and stay with her until one of my parents would come back and fetch me. Jethi cooked happy food. She would mix rice, butter, salt and potato fries and arrange them in balls around my plate like a small army. Then, because I was a finicky eater, she would make me name all of them and eat them one by one. I couldn’t miss any because it meant I didn’t love the person I had named it after.

The first day I came to Jethi’s place, she asked me to go wash up while she arranged the table. I obediently went to the basin, washed, and sat down. My arm had barely stretched towards my plate when she pounced on me. What dirty knuckles! She cried in dismay. She marched towards the basin while I guiltily followed. That day my knuckles were washed so vigorously that I’m sure they were raw red. But Jethi laughs when I claim that. From that day, till the end of the week, my knuckles were subjected to the same torture until they started resembling almost princess-like proportions. The day before thakurma was supposed to come back, Jethi made chicken for me too. I ate the usual nevertheless. I was stupid. She always claimed that I was the daughter she never had. I secretly stroke my knuckles and try to look as earnest as I can.

She came to visit a few days ago. I smiled at her and asked her whether my knuckles were clean enough or not. She laughingly told me that I had become a ‘young woman’. That now she didn’t have to worry about me because I knew how to discipline myself. I don’t really want to. And my knuckles still look the same.