French Lover by Nasrin Taslima

Author:Nasrin, Taslima [Nasrin, Taslima]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789351180043
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2002-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

Thus We Float Away

Danielle went back to Paris, after wilting under the dust, pollution, traffic jams and violent honking, and eating snacks off the roadside and falling ill, chatting with Monique Claude Mathew in her Park Street flat on two days and watching Nikhil perform his mother’s last rites. Danielle had tried to knock on the boulder. ‘Regrets? You may not have returned from Paris and Molina would have had to go without seeing you. Why are you feeling guilty? It doesn’t help anyone. Never think that way. Do you want to be a stagnant pond?’

But the boulder didn’t budge or speak. Nila threw away Danielle’s words on the rubbish heap nearby and said, ‘You have troubled me enough. Now go away.’

This one phrase should have been enough for Danielle to go back to Paris without a backward glance. But she stopped at the door, left a piece of paper with Monique Mathew’s address on the table and said she was Nicole’s friend, a very nice person. If Nila ever needed to, she could look her up.

The nights sank in deeper silences. No one moaned in the house, Chitra didn’t weep any more. She had cleared out Molina’s bed. The pillows and linen from Molina’s room had been cleaned. Anirban wanted to see patients in that room. He’d set it up with chairs, tables and an examination table. The sun vanished from the window. Nila stared at the darkness, her eyes focused on the moonless sky. On one such night Nikhil came and sat beside her, stroked her back comfortingly and said, ‘You are not the only one. We are all feeling sad. But we can’t bring back Ma. Life has to go on. That’s how it is. Reality can be very harsh, but we have to accept it.’

Nila began to speak in a trance. ‘We had a mother; she used to feed us, put us to bed, never let us get dirty, never let us feel any hurt. People called her dark and plain, we did too. We called her silly and naïve. She felt sad but it didn’t matter to us. Nothing about her mattered to us. We thought she was mother, not another human being. Mother means the one who doesn’t have a life of her own, who shouldn’t have one. If she screams in agony, we said, that’s nothing, just your imagination. When she dies, we just cremate her and think we have done our duty. That she no longer exists, doesn’t matter to us.’

‘Don’t talk rubbish. Come and have dinner.’

Both Anirban and Nikhil took three days off. Those three days there would be just rice and boiled vegetables cooked in the house. After that they would call the priest and Nila would have to perform her mother’s last rites. Nikhil’s duty extended for a whole month. He had wrapped a piece of unstitched cloth around his waist, another on his body and carried a cloth to sit on. He would eat only boiled vegetables and rice and yogurt with flat rice.

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