Gendered Space:Anthology of Stories by Jehanara Wasi

Author:Jehanara Wasi [Wasi, Jehanara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Srishti Publishers & Distributors
Published: 2000-12-30T18:30:00+00:00

Let’s Ask the Psychologist

Paul Zacharia

Respected Doctor,

Let me introduce myself. My name is Asha Matthew. Age 26. House-name, Karippurath. Father’s name, Joseph Matthew. Address: Kattirampu PO. Kuttiyadi. I am a young woman with a post graduate degree in English Literature and a B.Ed. degree. I have parents, an elder brother and two younger sisters. My brother is married. He has bought some land in Mananthavady and has settled down there. My sister-in-law is a teacher in a school there. One of my younger sisters is in the first year of the M.B.B.S. course. The youngest one is in the first year of the pre-degree course.

My father’s father is a farmer who migrated to Kuttiyadi from Marangattupalli to escape famine conditions during the time of the Second World War. I have always argued with Grandfather, maintaining that he should not have cut down the forest and cultivated the land. But Grandfather’s answer would be this: ‘Asha, you have never had to starve. When one has starved for some days along with one’s wife and children, one would feel like clearing, let alone forests, but the world itself and growing food.

Grandfather, aged 89, is a rationalist. He had carried on a correspondence with Dr. A.T. Kovoor, the renowned rationalist from Ceylon. In the evening when the family gathered for prayers, he would sit in his room and read. It was Grandmother, now 82, who made my father and all the rest of us follow in God’s path. Every morning Grandmother would go to church walking the four kilometres. When Father bought a car and said he would drop Grandmother at the church, she said, standing in the yard with the church-going veil drawn over her hair, “I will go to the Lords presence only on these two legs of mine, as long as I am able t:o walk.” When. I heard that I remembered the song in a Raj Kapoor film,

Sajan re jhoot mat bolo...

O upright ones, do not tell lies

You must go to God

Not on an elephant’s back, nor on horseback

But only on foot.

When I burst out laughing thinking of this, Grandmother was incensed. ‘Hey you, Asha, why are you laughing?’ she asked.

My father is a member of the Congress party and a believer who lives according to the tenets of the Catholic Church. He conforms to all norms of gentlemanly conduct. Father had starved when he was very young. By the time he had reached the age when his stomach would digest even stone, Grandfather had already raised tapioca and paddy in Kuttiyadi. He has bagged the prize for model farmer many times. Father’s love for us is beyond words. For him, our mother is precious. Father would drive Mother to bashfulness every now and then mentioning the fact that it was he who acted as midwife when she delivered our brother, because there was no doctor or hospital for miles around and Grandmother was away in the church. Father would ring up both my younger sisters in their hostels once a week regularly.

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