When I was five in 1971, Abba fell
From a coconut tree and cracked open his skull,
Like a ceremonial coconut.
The village elders informed Amma that he was fermenting coconut toddy in the sun,
Hidden in the highest fronds, he was drinking his devil’s drink and the Almighty hurled him down.
Like squashing a cockroach, they told my mother
He will burn in Hell-Jahannam forever, they told my mother
And it’s all her fault, for she had the evil eye
They told my mother.
Amma had green eyes and they might have sparkled like marbles once
But after Abba’s death, mother sold her jewels to bury Abba and pay for our food, our schooling,
She threw away whatever was left in her life
For the sake of our stomachs and our heads.
I think after Abba died, she also threw away
Her green eyes.
We were four brothers and five sisters and selfishly, we all needed to grow up at the same time.
Our childhoods must’ve been a nightmare for Amma.
Our upbringings like nine desert crossings, nine crucifixions, nine agonising dry deaths.
Yet she threw away the rest of her life for us and she continued living the nightmare,
As if that was the only thing she could ever dream of doing.
I remember Amma as tired and humourless as an old woman, while still in her twenties,
I remember her working three jobs at once just to keep us alive,
With a demon’s or a mad woman’s tenacity.
She worked as a daily labourer and carried sand and sowed paddy waist deep in mud and
Fished river crabs and foraged wild spinach and
Even in the worst famines, she miraculously cooked something for us, even if it was
Boiled muddy water.
We didn’t care cause we ate or imagined we were eating something
And we knew Amma
Would serve us one meal a day, even if she had to cook
Her own flesh.
She was a demon, our Amma.
During the war of independence, she smuggled guns, carried messages and she gave shelter
To a Mukti Bahini guerrilla soldier.
A man, whose face I’ve forgotten, whose name we never knew, who never said a word to us and visited our hut late every night, ate rice in pitch darkness,
Said his Namaaz and slept somewhere inside the hut, although none of us nine brothers and sisters
Can imagine where exactly he found the place to sleep.
Amma never said a word to him either but one afternoon, on returning early from school,
I found her cleaning the freedom fighter’s rifle
With a strange smile on her face and I realised
That she had found her green eyes again.
Then in the most obscure days of my childhood, Pakistani soldiers entered our village
And shot all the men and many male children.
We didn’t ask what they did to the womenfolk but we knew,
Even my youngest brother- 1 and a half years old-
Knew exactly what was happening.
Amma told us to hide in the Mango forest and remained in the hut, waiting
For the freedom fighter to return.
She was a mad woman, our Amma
We hid in the forest for 2 days and nights and when we returned,
Amma was broken and bleeding and nearly dead and the freedom fighter’s body
Had been hacked and shot into many small pieces
And scattered around the bloodied village pond.
Vultures and foxes were fighting over his innards.
But I must’ve imagined a lot of what happened then for as I say,
It was the most obscure time in my childhood.
What I know for a fact is that when we, all four brothers
Were going to school together,
Amma managed to magically procure one egg a day (she must’ve stolen it from somewhere or the neighbours may have taken pity on the madwoman who once had the evil eye)
And she boiled the egg
And she broke it with her finger into four pieces and fed the four of us the meal of the day,
A quarter egg and a fistful of rice each.
Somedays she would slip us 10 paise pocket money, most days she didn’t have such great wealth.
And she would apologise to us, us fucking spoilt brats.
We grew up and killed Amma in the process.
35 years she never left the village except when it was to visit her sister in the
Neighbouring village.
Then when we had all grown up and abandoned the village and her and led our nonsensical lives.
Only then did she let herself die.
Something terrible was tearing apart her insides, she was coughing up blood in the hut.
Only my sisters, my youngest brother and I bothered to turn up at her side as she lay dying
The Kazi asked her for any last requests from the All Mighty,
Who had hurled her husband from the coconut tree four decades ago.
She croaked out her request.
She wanted to be denied heaven- Jannat,
She did not desire the paradise to which she was surely entitled.
She wanted to go to Jahannam- to burn in hell
Why? The Kazi shrieked and we were afraid he was about to pass out from such blasphemy
“To be with my man”, croaked Amma and even as
The Kazi picked up his umbrella, cursed the mad woman who once had green marble like evil eyes and pronounced her a Damned whore,
Even as my religious brother wept and my sisters blushed,
I knew that Amma was going to hunt down that wife-beating, coconut toddy drunkard- our Abba,
That lout who was lucky enough to marry the most beautiful girl in the village,
Who gave him nine children, who was so lucky that he just had to throw it all away and drink
Till he dropped and sentence Amma
To four decades in hell- that fucking idiot,
No matter which brimstone in hell he is he is hiding under, I know Amma will find
Her irresponsible, abusive, heartless lover and once she finds him,
I cannot imagine
What she is going to do to him.
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