Katha by Butalia Urvashi;

Author:Butalia, Urvashi;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Saqi

BULBUL SHARMA

Mayadevi’s London Yatra

The day Mayadevi turned sixty-eight, seventy or seventy-five years old (her date of birth was an ever-changing event linked to her moods), she decided to go to London. Everyone in the family was stunned when she announced this, but no one dared to speak out because the old lady ruled over the entire three-storied house with a quiet reign of terror. Whenever she decided to do something, her three sons and their wives quickly agreed, since they had learnt, slowly and bitterly, over the years, that no one questioned the old lady’s whims. Though there was no need for Mayadevi to give an explanation to her submissive and docile family, she still called her sons and gave her reasons for undertaking such an unusual journey at her age.

‘I want to see Amit before I die.’

This eldest son of hers had gone to England to study when he was eighteen years old and had not returned to India since then. He wrote to his mother on the fifteenth of every month and sent her money regularly along with many expensive but useless presents, but did not come home to see her because he had an acute phobia of flying. He had travelled to England by ship in 1948 and once he had landed there after a traumatic and unpleasant journey, he never stepped out of the safety of the island. There had been a few short, tension-filled trips to France and Italy, but these were either by train or by boat. Around every October as the Puja season approached, he promised his mother that, this year, he would take the plunge and get into an aircraft and come to Calcutta, but his nerve failed him with reassuring regularity each time.

‘The wretched boy was always a sissy. He never could cross the road if a cow was standing in the middle. Lizards frightened him and rats made him scream from the time when he was fifteen. I will shame him by going to London – to his very doorstep, even if I have to bathe in the Ganga a hundred times after I return,’ the old lady declared and the sons, who thought it a very foolish idea, nodded their agreement as they had done all their lives.

Once the momentous decision had been taken, Mayadevi began planning for her journey on a warlike footing. She first applied for a passport and visa, but filled the forms with a lot of arguments and protests because she did not like the impertinent questions the government dared to ask her. Once that was over, she bought a big register and wrote down her plan of action step by step.

Now she decided to tackle the English language. Though Mayadevi had never been to school, she could read and write Bengali fluently and was far better-read than her graduate accountant sons. She could understand simple sentences in English but had never spoken the language to anyone in her entire life, since the occasion had never arisen.

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