Kindred
Moachiba Jamir
Moachiba Jamir
"Head of a Woman" Eugène Carrière, Aquatint, 12 5/16 × 8 3/4 in., ca. 1904. Open source from The Met.
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She sat there nameless. Mangyangba’s 90 year old bones creaked with every step he took towards her — this crippled woman sitting beside the fire. She looked up at him with a face toughened by the harshness of time.
“I’m hungry,” he announced. The woman sighed as she took some rice from the pot beside her and placed it on his wooden plate. Funny how she knew that was his plate, Mangyangba thought.
#
The village was waking up to the calls of morning as Mangyangba made his way towards the wooden chair in front of his thatch house. He was never sure about anything these days, but sitting on this chair was something he definitely knew to be routine.
The old chair creaked under his measly weight and his bones creaked as if in response. As he settled down into his uncomfortable but familiar position, he began searching and diving into the depths of his mind — a nautical cartography. He liked to let his mind wander as he sat on his chair; he wouldn’t let it go very far for he was not sure what lay beneath the depth of his ocean, but just enough to help him stay connected with himself, his past, and maybe his future. The morning light was bathing his crumpled old skin with its golden rays and he felt contented with his place in the world. As the day progressed though, the harshness of the sunlight started to prick his already dry skin, kneading it to its demands, but he did not want to move. He found out he was more likely to bear something painful as opposed to something unlikeable, and sitting here in the sun was slightly more painful than unlikeable.
Now who were these people walking by his old house. Mangyangba stared at the blurry faces that passed by. These young people walk too fast, he thought. How could he possibly recognise their faces? But Lo! There was old Meren’s nephew speeding by; Mangyangba had accompanied his uncle fishing once, and had almost drowned during the ordeal. Yes, yes he remembered.
And there was — Semermayang — yes… that was his name…Semermayang. He remembered of course. Mangyangba had worked on his grandfather’s field with his age-mates way back when. Yes. He remembered. Semermayang gave him a wave of his arm as he passed by, “Going to the fields grandfather. I hope everything is well?” Mangyangba was happy to have been noticed, and replied with a raised hand as he croaked out a genial “Hau hau” in confirmation. Everything was well.
#
“You’re burning yourself,” the crippled woman announced her presence from behind the door.
“Mmm,” said Mangyangba. It was a beautiful day out, what problem did she have with him sitting out here. “I’m not moving from here,” he resolved in his mind.
The crippled woman familiar with his obstinacy hobbled forward and placed a shawl on the clothesline in front of him. Its shadow covered the man, but it also obstructed his view of the street beyond. As she was going back, Mangyangba slowly moved the shawl away so that he could see the streets again. Much better, he thought.
“You’ll burn your skin I said, you stupid oaf!” She shouted as she put the shawl back in place.
“I can’t see them!” His voice sounded like smoke, a wisp appearing one second and gone the next.
“Who?”
“The people, the villagers… I can’t see them,” He seemed to plead.
She looked at the people walking by and wondered how they looked like to his hazy old eyes. She herself could hardly recognise any of these young folks hurrying about their lives. She wondered who he saw when he looked out at the streets, his mind clouded by its own deceit.
The crippled woman slowly trudged back to the clothesline and fixed the shawl’s shadow to cover Mangyangba’s upper half. He could still see the streets but wouldn’t get the brunt of the harsh sun. She hurried back inside the kitchen.
#
Her language was familiar but her voice… it was the voice that Mangyangba could not place, the cadence, that scratchy sound as she spewed out her words. He had heard it before but he just couldn’t associate it with a past that he was familiar with. He heard it again when she brought out some tea for him.
“Don’t drink it too quickly; it’s still very hot,” she said as she handed him the cup.
“Mmm,” he agreed and she hurried back inside the dark kitchen as if scared of exposing her crippled foot in the sun for too long.
The heat was quickly transferring to his palms as he held the bottom of the metal cup. It might have hurt him when he was younger, but over the years his hands had adapted to the harshness of the heat and now it felt only a little more painful than a slight singe — painful but bearable, just like his life.
“Uncle, you look fairly young today.” Mangyangba could see two elderly women walking towards him as they cackled at their own remark.
Mangyangba let out an old grin as he joined in on their amusement. “Sit sit,” He invited them as he gestured beside him and when he realized there were no seats, he called out to the crippled woman with a new vigour, “Ayyy! Bring some seats out for our guests,” He said “And prepare some tea for them too,” He added after a beat.
“No no, don’t bother,” The women said to the crippled woman who had come out to see if the guests were real or just another figment of his imagination. “We were on our way to meet Sentibenla’s new-born, but we noticed uncle and just had to come see him,” she explained their presence to the crippled woman.
Smiling and welcoming them, she brought out seats for the two women and told them to stay put until she prepared some tea for them, brushing away their half-hearted refusals as excuses. Before she went in though, there was a short exchange of pleasantries between the three women who seemed rather familiar with each other, but Mangyangba was not listening to them. He was trying to figure out who these two were and how they were connected to him. He wrestled with his mind, trying to make old connections, churning up memories from his hazy past and reaching out to a time he had long left behind. But all he could pull out from his swamp filled mind were reeds and mud.
“Uncle,” said one of them genially, “Do you remember who we are?”
Stuck in an ocean of oblivion, Mangyangba was drowning, panting and gaging for some kind of rescue; a breath of air, a helping hand… something. But all he got were these people asking him if he remembered how to swim. “You’re those people from down the street,” He said. The women cackled in response to his usual generalisation.
“I wish they’d just tell me their names,” Mangyangba thought to himself. But they didn’t. Instead they talked about all the stories of the bygone days: his halcyon days when stunted memory did not stop him from venturing out of his house, into the village and the vastness of the fields beyond. They talked about how he used to be the pride of the village, the suitor among suitors, who could harvest ten jute bags of tapioca roots by himself, a warrior among men. But for all their praises, he was oddly getting detached from the conversation, mostly because he couldn’t remember most of the events they were talking about. They seemed like accomplishments of a man who had died a long time ago; he was not that man.
By the time the women left after having drunk their tea and spoken their fill, Mangyangba was exhausted. He had wanted a peaceful morning without his mind being prodded by the prongs of shared memory. He believed his memories were his alone, for him to keep, and he didn’t like people talking about events of his own past, muddying memories that he thought were clean. He often had memories of what he thought had happened in his past, only to find out from others that his version was always lacking in some place or the other and he did not like that at all; it made him feel useless, the way he couldn’t even guard his own memories, the way people decided they knew more about his past than he knew himself.
#
The day’s events had affected Mangyangba much more than he would dare to admit. So he came inside the kitchen earlier than he usually did, just to get away from any more people wanting to add their own tributaries into his stream of personal memories.
Mangyangba slowly made his way to his chair in the kitchen. It had been placed at just the right distance from the fireplace: not too close to get overheated and not too far to be chilled by the slight breeze coming in from the open door on the other side of the house, left open to let the smoke from the fire escape. He liked this chair too. It held certain memories for him which he knew were true. His grandchildren… yes his grandchildren used to surround him as he sat in his chair; him eloquently regaling them with folktales and them fascinatingly fixated on his every word. Some of the younger ones could not have patience enough to listen to the stories and would go play around the kitchen, making up their own stories as they lived in their own funny worlds. He could not remember all their names or their faces but he was almost certain that they did exist; they were as real as he was.
The gloomy smoke rising from the kitchen fire had blackened the thatch walls with soot and the crippled woman was hunched near it, fussing over what was probably their meal. At that moment, Mangyangba didn’t realize it but he missed his grandchildren dearly. “This kitchen used to be so full of life,” was the only thought he could muster up to satiate the nagging feeling in his stomach.
“When are the grandchildren coming to visit?” Mangyangba asked the crippled woman suddenly. She was visibly taken aback by his unsolicited enquiry. Mangyangba never really talked unless he needed something from her.
“You know they only come to the village during their winter breaks,” she replied as she stoked the fire.
“And what is it now?”
“July”
“Oh”
She pulled out the rice filled aluminium pot that had been keeping warm in the coal filled hearth. Taking Mangyangba’s wooden plate, she scooped up some rice from the pot onto his plate and then put in some boiled mustard leaves along with the water it was boiled in. It was still too early for his lunch but the crippled woman decided that she would rather finish off this task earlier than later. Mangyangba was watching her intently during this whole process. Her manoeuvres were very mechanical in its routine but fluid in its execution; it was as if her upper half was making up for the rigidity of her lower half.
The wooden floor of the stilted kitchen provided acoustics for the woman’s steps as she limped towards Mangyangba. It was a heavy thump of her normal right foot and then the soft pad of the crippled left foot which was quickly raised up and taken over by the right again, as if it was ashamed to defile the floor by its crookedness. Thump…pad-thump…pad-thump…pad-thump… she limped towards Mangyangba with his plate of food.
Mangyangba tried to dive deep into his mind, into his past, trying to discover the cause behind her crippled foot, but he found himself fighting invisible waves of oblivion, finally coming up for air, empty-handed. He decided it was better to ask.
“What’s wrong with your feet?”
She didn’t seem to register his question. She sat down beside him and started to feed him the rice from her hands but he moved his head away.
“I can eat by myself,” he grumbled.
“Fine,” she spat out, putting the plate on his lap.
He noticed she didn’t bring him water to wash his hands but it didn’t matter much to him. He slowly rolled up the rice in his old palms, making sure he mixed it with the mustard leaf broth, and gulped it down hungrily though he wasn’t really hungry. As careful as he was, tiny blobs of mashed rice fell from his hands on their way to his mouth. He looked over expecting reproach, but the crippled woman didn’t seem to be paying attention to him.
#
The sun was starting to droop into her inevitable slumber and sitting inside the kitchen the whole day was making Mangyangba restless. He wanted to go out, having already forgotten the reason behind his self-imposed incarceration. The crippled woman was nowhere to be seen. She had been shrouded in silence after their little spat during the day and even forgot to serve him his black tea after his meal.
Slowly rising up from his chair, Mangyangba — hunched and spindly — walked out of the kitchen into the streets for the first time in many years. The ground was not gravelly beneath his worn out rubber sandals and he was confused. He couldn’t recognise the bitumen lined roads of his village. The world was swirling orange around him as he looked at the whirlpool of faces spinning around him under the dying sun. Faces stared at him: faces familiar, unfamiliar, and those in between the interstices of these two, but he couldn’t differentiate one from the others as they unwittingly crashed into each other, greedily seeking their chance to crash onto his mind’s sandy shores.
He stood there on his deserted island, drifting, seeking to find the shores of a place he no longer recognised or remembered — where was he? Who was he?
A name, a voice, reached out to him, pulling him out of his own mind. “Oba,” the voice called out, no longer spewing her words: “Father.” Yes, he was a father, a grandfather, a husband. He was Mangyangba, and he still is Mangyangba; how aptly his parents had named him Mangyangba: “one who grieves.” How appropriate that he had been intimate with grief all his life but now that he was old enough to retrospect on his grief, his mind didn’t even allow him that dignity.
Her cragged hands held his wrinkly ones. Both hardened by the pains of life. Like two islands never destined to meet, they crashed into each other. She held his hands and softly tugged on it, begging him to come back home. “Lapunaro.” yes… that was her name: his water lily. Oh how fragile she had looked within his arms. He had held her and known that she would grow up to be a much envied woman, a rare lily among thorns and roses. But what had happened to her? What happened in their conjoined past that made her grovel so, hiding in the darkness of the kitchen, caring for a father who didn’t even remember her.
All these thoughts swam up to shore while they slowly made their way into their little dark hole they called home. They walked the planks of their kitchen together. His stiff shuffle mingled with her stunted steps and the floor seemed to creak to their eccentric tango. She ushered him into his chair with a care she hadn’t shown him for a long time and then went deeper into the kitchen to prepare their dinner.
#
Dinner was rice, boiled chayote and a dab of tomato chutney. She sat beside him and fed him, this time without protestation. The fire was crackling in the corner, a soft evening breeze was coming in through the open door and every now and then Mangyangba’s old lips would smack as he chewed his food.
“Lapunaro,” He called out as she was washing his plate in the sink after dinner. “Tell me what happened to your feet.”
She stopped her scrubbing and stared at the water escaping from the plate into the little hole at the bottom. It had always been this way, she thought. She did not expect any better from him, but she could not help but feel sad, neglected and dejected, even more than usual. Her topography never fully explored because she had been stuck with him her whole life. She had been the second most beautiful daughter, the only sibling to be affected by polio — permanently crippling her feet and her future, she had found a husband but lost him to drugs, she had borne children but they could never live up to the reputation of her sister’s children who lived in the city—just like she could never live up to her father’s expectations, just like she could never be fully loved by her father no matter what she did, just like she was remembered only by the name of her sister Lapunaro—her own name lost in her father’s sea of failures, him refusing to rescue it. It was better this way, she had always comforted herself, it did not even matter, she used to say to pacify her anger, but it did, it did to her and she hated him every day for it.
“Do you want some black tea?” she said hoping he would give up his questioning.
“Mmm,” he mumbled in affirmation.
She put some tea leaves into his usual cup and poured boiling water over it, handing over the cup as she took up the chair next to him. They were both silent as Mangyangba occasionally slurped his tea. Time seemed to loop inside this kitchen; everyday seemed no different than any other day. Whatever she said, whatever she did, her father would wake up the next day forgetting most of whatever happened the day before, with random memories spurting out during the course of the day. She often wondered why she even took care of him when he would not even remember her name the next day. The only thing that seemed to break the loop was the winter holidays when her children would come home from the city, along with their more accomplished cousins. During these days, both of them would at least try to pretend that everything was okay, that they both did not feel like giving up every other day, as one drowned deeper into his own oblivion and the other choked harder in her neglect.
Mangyangba slowly stood up and she was drawn out of her thoughts.
“Where are you going?” He slowly shuffled his body in the direction of the toilet.
“Do you need to pee?” she asked as she held his hand for the second time that day.
“Mmm,” he nodded.
She guided him to the bathroom on the other side of the house. It was a full moon night and she could hear crickets and critters chirping in the evening breeze. As he stood there, she unbuttoned his pants and turned around. But instead of the drip of piss hitting the toilet, she heard the splutter of shit. As she turned around, she saw Mangyangba standing there with his pants splattered with shit and piss. She could see his eyes and they seemed blank; there was nothing inside them, not even embarrassment. He didn’t say anything, he couldn’t. As the daughter took off his pants and cleaned him up, his eyes seemed to water for the tiniest second before it retreated back into its cave of forgetfulness. He stood there staring blankly and mumbling to himself, until she brought in a clean pair of pants for him. He did not wear undergarments because he would soil them occasionally and it meant more work for her.
She guided him back to his room and settled him off to sleep. As she went back to her dark corner of the kitchen, she began to think how the next day would be another loop and the sun would shine down upon his old skin again, and she would be there to give him the shade he needed, she would be there to feed him the food he craved and she would be there to offer him the love he never gave her. He might not remember her, but this was her lot in life and she was determined to see it through until one of them gave up on surviving this lonely thing they were forced to call life.
“I’m hungry,” he announced. The woman sighed as she took some rice from the pot beside her and placed it on his wooden plate. Funny how she knew that was his plate, Mangyangba thought.
#
The village was waking up to the calls of morning as Mangyangba made his way towards the wooden chair in front of his thatch house. He was never sure about anything these days, but sitting on this chair was something he definitely knew to be routine.
The old chair creaked under his measly weight and his bones creaked as if in response. As he settled down into his uncomfortable but familiar position, he began searching and diving into the depths of his mind — a nautical cartography. He liked to let his mind wander as he sat on his chair; he wouldn’t let it go very far for he was not sure what lay beneath the depth of his ocean, but just enough to help him stay connected with himself, his past, and maybe his future. The morning light was bathing his crumpled old skin with its golden rays and he felt contented with his place in the world. As the day progressed though, the harshness of the sunlight started to prick his already dry skin, kneading it to its demands, but he did not want to move. He found out he was more likely to bear something painful as opposed to something unlikeable, and sitting here in the sun was slightly more painful than unlikeable.
Now who were these people walking by his old house. Mangyangba stared at the blurry faces that passed by. These young people walk too fast, he thought. How could he possibly recognise their faces? But Lo! There was old Meren’s nephew speeding by; Mangyangba had accompanied his uncle fishing once, and had almost drowned during the ordeal. Yes, yes he remembered.
And there was — Semermayang — yes… that was his name…Semermayang. He remembered of course. Mangyangba had worked on his grandfather’s field with his age-mates way back when. Yes. He remembered. Semermayang gave him a wave of his arm as he passed by, “Going to the fields grandfather. I hope everything is well?” Mangyangba was happy to have been noticed, and replied with a raised hand as he croaked out a genial “Hau hau” in confirmation. Everything was well.
#
“You’re burning yourself,” the crippled woman announced her presence from behind the door.
“Mmm,” said Mangyangba. It was a beautiful day out, what problem did she have with him sitting out here. “I’m not moving from here,” he resolved in his mind.
The crippled woman familiar with his obstinacy hobbled forward and placed a shawl on the clothesline in front of him. Its shadow covered the man, but it also obstructed his view of the street beyond. As she was going back, Mangyangba slowly moved the shawl away so that he could see the streets again. Much better, he thought.
“You’ll burn your skin I said, you stupid oaf!” She shouted as she put the shawl back in place.
“I can’t see them!” His voice sounded like smoke, a wisp appearing one second and gone the next.
“Who?”
“The people, the villagers… I can’t see them,” He seemed to plead.
She looked at the people walking by and wondered how they looked like to his hazy old eyes. She herself could hardly recognise any of these young folks hurrying about their lives. She wondered who he saw when he looked out at the streets, his mind clouded by its own deceit.
The crippled woman slowly trudged back to the clothesline and fixed the shawl’s shadow to cover Mangyangba’s upper half. He could still see the streets but wouldn’t get the brunt of the harsh sun. She hurried back inside the kitchen.
#
Her language was familiar but her voice… it was the voice that Mangyangba could not place, the cadence, that scratchy sound as she spewed out her words. He had heard it before but he just couldn’t associate it with a past that he was familiar with. He heard it again when she brought out some tea for him.
“Don’t drink it too quickly; it’s still very hot,” she said as she handed him the cup.
“Mmm,” he agreed and she hurried back inside the dark kitchen as if scared of exposing her crippled foot in the sun for too long.
The heat was quickly transferring to his palms as he held the bottom of the metal cup. It might have hurt him when he was younger, but over the years his hands had adapted to the harshness of the heat and now it felt only a little more painful than a slight singe — painful but bearable, just like his life.
“Uncle, you look fairly young today.” Mangyangba could see two elderly women walking towards him as they cackled at their own remark.
Mangyangba let out an old grin as he joined in on their amusement. “Sit sit,” He invited them as he gestured beside him and when he realized there were no seats, he called out to the crippled woman with a new vigour, “Ayyy! Bring some seats out for our guests,” He said “And prepare some tea for them too,” He added after a beat.
“No no, don’t bother,” The women said to the crippled woman who had come out to see if the guests were real or just another figment of his imagination. “We were on our way to meet Sentibenla’s new-born, but we noticed uncle and just had to come see him,” she explained their presence to the crippled woman.
Smiling and welcoming them, she brought out seats for the two women and told them to stay put until she prepared some tea for them, brushing away their half-hearted refusals as excuses. Before she went in though, there was a short exchange of pleasantries between the three women who seemed rather familiar with each other, but Mangyangba was not listening to them. He was trying to figure out who these two were and how they were connected to him. He wrestled with his mind, trying to make old connections, churning up memories from his hazy past and reaching out to a time he had long left behind. But all he could pull out from his swamp filled mind were reeds and mud.
“Uncle,” said one of them genially, “Do you remember who we are?”
Stuck in an ocean of oblivion, Mangyangba was drowning, panting and gaging for some kind of rescue; a breath of air, a helping hand… something. But all he got were these people asking him if he remembered how to swim. “You’re those people from down the street,” He said. The women cackled in response to his usual generalisation.
“I wish they’d just tell me their names,” Mangyangba thought to himself. But they didn’t. Instead they talked about all the stories of the bygone days: his halcyon days when stunted memory did not stop him from venturing out of his house, into the village and the vastness of the fields beyond. They talked about how he used to be the pride of the village, the suitor among suitors, who could harvest ten jute bags of tapioca roots by himself, a warrior among men. But for all their praises, he was oddly getting detached from the conversation, mostly because he couldn’t remember most of the events they were talking about. They seemed like accomplishments of a man who had died a long time ago; he was not that man.
By the time the women left after having drunk their tea and spoken their fill, Mangyangba was exhausted. He had wanted a peaceful morning without his mind being prodded by the prongs of shared memory. He believed his memories were his alone, for him to keep, and he didn’t like people talking about events of his own past, muddying memories that he thought were clean. He often had memories of what he thought had happened in his past, only to find out from others that his version was always lacking in some place or the other and he did not like that at all; it made him feel useless, the way he couldn’t even guard his own memories, the way people decided they knew more about his past than he knew himself.
#
The day’s events had affected Mangyangba much more than he would dare to admit. So he came inside the kitchen earlier than he usually did, just to get away from any more people wanting to add their own tributaries into his stream of personal memories.
Mangyangba slowly made his way to his chair in the kitchen. It had been placed at just the right distance from the fireplace: not too close to get overheated and not too far to be chilled by the slight breeze coming in from the open door on the other side of the house, left open to let the smoke from the fire escape. He liked this chair too. It held certain memories for him which he knew were true. His grandchildren… yes his grandchildren used to surround him as he sat in his chair; him eloquently regaling them with folktales and them fascinatingly fixated on his every word. Some of the younger ones could not have patience enough to listen to the stories and would go play around the kitchen, making up their own stories as they lived in their own funny worlds. He could not remember all their names or their faces but he was almost certain that they did exist; they were as real as he was.
The gloomy smoke rising from the kitchen fire had blackened the thatch walls with soot and the crippled woman was hunched near it, fussing over what was probably their meal. At that moment, Mangyangba didn’t realize it but he missed his grandchildren dearly. “This kitchen used to be so full of life,” was the only thought he could muster up to satiate the nagging feeling in his stomach.
“When are the grandchildren coming to visit?” Mangyangba asked the crippled woman suddenly. She was visibly taken aback by his unsolicited enquiry. Mangyangba never really talked unless he needed something from her.
“You know they only come to the village during their winter breaks,” she replied as she stoked the fire.
“And what is it now?”
“July”
“Oh”
She pulled out the rice filled aluminium pot that had been keeping warm in the coal filled hearth. Taking Mangyangba’s wooden plate, she scooped up some rice from the pot onto his plate and then put in some boiled mustard leaves along with the water it was boiled in. It was still too early for his lunch but the crippled woman decided that she would rather finish off this task earlier than later. Mangyangba was watching her intently during this whole process. Her manoeuvres were very mechanical in its routine but fluid in its execution; it was as if her upper half was making up for the rigidity of her lower half.
The wooden floor of the stilted kitchen provided acoustics for the woman’s steps as she limped towards Mangyangba. It was a heavy thump of her normal right foot and then the soft pad of the crippled left foot which was quickly raised up and taken over by the right again, as if it was ashamed to defile the floor by its crookedness. Thump…pad-thump…pad-thump…pad-thump… she limped towards Mangyangba with his plate of food.
Mangyangba tried to dive deep into his mind, into his past, trying to discover the cause behind her crippled foot, but he found himself fighting invisible waves of oblivion, finally coming up for air, empty-handed. He decided it was better to ask.
“What’s wrong with your feet?”
She didn’t seem to register his question. She sat down beside him and started to feed him the rice from her hands but he moved his head away.
“I can eat by myself,” he grumbled.
“Fine,” she spat out, putting the plate on his lap.
He noticed she didn’t bring him water to wash his hands but it didn’t matter much to him. He slowly rolled up the rice in his old palms, making sure he mixed it with the mustard leaf broth, and gulped it down hungrily though he wasn’t really hungry. As careful as he was, tiny blobs of mashed rice fell from his hands on their way to his mouth. He looked over expecting reproach, but the crippled woman didn’t seem to be paying attention to him.
#
The sun was starting to droop into her inevitable slumber and sitting inside the kitchen the whole day was making Mangyangba restless. He wanted to go out, having already forgotten the reason behind his self-imposed incarceration. The crippled woman was nowhere to be seen. She had been shrouded in silence after their little spat during the day and even forgot to serve him his black tea after his meal.
Slowly rising up from his chair, Mangyangba — hunched and spindly — walked out of the kitchen into the streets for the first time in many years. The ground was not gravelly beneath his worn out rubber sandals and he was confused. He couldn’t recognise the bitumen lined roads of his village. The world was swirling orange around him as he looked at the whirlpool of faces spinning around him under the dying sun. Faces stared at him: faces familiar, unfamiliar, and those in between the interstices of these two, but he couldn’t differentiate one from the others as they unwittingly crashed into each other, greedily seeking their chance to crash onto his mind’s sandy shores.
He stood there on his deserted island, drifting, seeking to find the shores of a place he no longer recognised or remembered — where was he? Who was he?
A name, a voice, reached out to him, pulling him out of his own mind. “Oba,” the voice called out, no longer spewing her words: “Father.” Yes, he was a father, a grandfather, a husband. He was Mangyangba, and he still is Mangyangba; how aptly his parents had named him Mangyangba: “one who grieves.” How appropriate that he had been intimate with grief all his life but now that he was old enough to retrospect on his grief, his mind didn’t even allow him that dignity.
Her cragged hands held his wrinkly ones. Both hardened by the pains of life. Like two islands never destined to meet, they crashed into each other. She held his hands and softly tugged on it, begging him to come back home. “Lapunaro.” yes… that was her name: his water lily. Oh how fragile she had looked within his arms. He had held her and known that she would grow up to be a much envied woman, a rare lily among thorns and roses. But what had happened to her? What happened in their conjoined past that made her grovel so, hiding in the darkness of the kitchen, caring for a father who didn’t even remember her.
All these thoughts swam up to shore while they slowly made their way into their little dark hole they called home. They walked the planks of their kitchen together. His stiff shuffle mingled with her stunted steps and the floor seemed to creak to their eccentric tango. She ushered him into his chair with a care she hadn’t shown him for a long time and then went deeper into the kitchen to prepare their dinner.
#
Dinner was rice, boiled chayote and a dab of tomato chutney. She sat beside him and fed him, this time without protestation. The fire was crackling in the corner, a soft evening breeze was coming in through the open door and every now and then Mangyangba’s old lips would smack as he chewed his food.
“Lapunaro,” He called out as she was washing his plate in the sink after dinner. “Tell me what happened to your feet.”
She stopped her scrubbing and stared at the water escaping from the plate into the little hole at the bottom. It had always been this way, she thought. She did not expect any better from him, but she could not help but feel sad, neglected and dejected, even more than usual. Her topography never fully explored because she had been stuck with him her whole life. She had been the second most beautiful daughter, the only sibling to be affected by polio — permanently crippling her feet and her future, she had found a husband but lost him to drugs, she had borne children but they could never live up to the reputation of her sister’s children who lived in the city—just like she could never live up to her father’s expectations, just like she could never be fully loved by her father no matter what she did, just like she was remembered only by the name of her sister Lapunaro—her own name lost in her father’s sea of failures, him refusing to rescue it. It was better this way, she had always comforted herself, it did not even matter, she used to say to pacify her anger, but it did, it did to her and she hated him every day for it.
“Do you want some black tea?” she said hoping he would give up his questioning.
“Mmm,” he mumbled in affirmation.
She put some tea leaves into his usual cup and poured boiling water over it, handing over the cup as she took up the chair next to him. They were both silent as Mangyangba occasionally slurped his tea. Time seemed to loop inside this kitchen; everyday seemed no different than any other day. Whatever she said, whatever she did, her father would wake up the next day forgetting most of whatever happened the day before, with random memories spurting out during the course of the day. She often wondered why she even took care of him when he would not even remember her name the next day. The only thing that seemed to break the loop was the winter holidays when her children would come home from the city, along with their more accomplished cousins. During these days, both of them would at least try to pretend that everything was okay, that they both did not feel like giving up every other day, as one drowned deeper into his own oblivion and the other choked harder in her neglect.
Mangyangba slowly stood up and she was drawn out of her thoughts.
“Where are you going?” He slowly shuffled his body in the direction of the toilet.
“Do you need to pee?” she asked as she held his hand for the second time that day.
“Mmm,” he nodded.
She guided him to the bathroom on the other side of the house. It was a full moon night and she could hear crickets and critters chirping in the evening breeze. As he stood there, she unbuttoned his pants and turned around. But instead of the drip of piss hitting the toilet, she heard the splutter of shit. As she turned around, she saw Mangyangba standing there with his pants splattered with shit and piss. She could see his eyes and they seemed blank; there was nothing inside them, not even embarrassment. He didn’t say anything, he couldn’t. As the daughter took off his pants and cleaned him up, his eyes seemed to water for the tiniest second before it retreated back into its cave of forgetfulness. He stood there staring blankly and mumbling to himself, until she brought in a clean pair of pants for him. He did not wear undergarments because he would soil them occasionally and it meant more work for her.
She guided him back to his room and settled him off to sleep. As she went back to her dark corner of the kitchen, she began to think how the next day would be another loop and the sun would shine down upon his old skin again, and she would be there to give him the shade he needed, she would be there to feed him the food he craved and she would be there to offer him the love he never gave her. He might not remember her, but this was her lot in life and she was determined to see it through until one of them gave up on surviving this lonely thing they were forced to call life.
About the Author
Moachiba Jamir lives in a small town called Kohima in Nagaland and is currently an undergrad at EFLU, Hyderabad. He is a participant in the IWP Summer Institute pre-program of the University of Iowa. He hopes that his writings will be able shed some light on the often underrepresented regions of Nagaland, India.
About the Work
"Keeping in tune with Inverted Syntax's admirable endeavours to give a voice to BIPOC, "Kindred" seeks to champion the intricacies of everyday life of a Naga person. It, in its essence, moves against the silent sufferings and neglect of tribal people, shouting that "We are here! We are suffering just like the rest of you! Do not forget about us!" With the author's present economic condition, this publication would not have been possible if the reading fee hadn't been waived for BIPOC and so the publication of this piece in itself is a testament to the wonderful work that Inverted Syntax is doing in alleviating the conditions of BIPOC, one piece at a time."
Moachiba Jamir lives in a small town called Kohima in Nagaland and is currently an undergrad at EFLU, Hyderabad. He is a participant in the IWP Summer Institute pre-program of the University of Iowa. He hopes that his writings will be able shed some light on the often underrepresented regions of Nagaland, India.
About the Work
"Keeping in tune with Inverted Syntax's admirable endeavours to give a voice to BIPOC, "Kindred" seeks to champion the intricacies of everyday life of a Naga person. It, in its essence, moves against the silent sufferings and neglect of tribal people, shouting that "We are here! We are suffering just like the rest of you! Do not forget about us!" With the author's present economic condition, this publication would not have been possible if the reading fee hadn't been waived for BIPOC and so the publication of this piece in itself is a testament to the wonderful work that Inverted Syntax is doing in alleviating the conditions of BIPOC, one piece at a time."
