Expiry Date

Fiction

“Omane….edi Omane…” the earsplitting scream made Omana drop the handful of pappadams she was holding in her hand on the floor and rush in.

Her mother was lying on the the bed. Her old nightie had ridden up to reveal wrinkled scaly dry thighs. There was a faint smell of urine that hung about in the room. The smell overpowered that of any cleaning solutions. She had just washed the floor with dettol and Lizol and Omana could still smell piss.

“What is it amme? Do you need to go to the bathroom?”

“Who are you?” Her amma looked at her suspiciously.

“Entha amme…I am Omana. You called for me.”

“You are not Omana. My Omana is beautiful. You are ugly.”

Omana bit back her response and said, “Omana is frying pappadams for lunch. She will come when it is done.”

“Tell her to come immediately.”

“I will”

Omana sighed and walked back to the kitchen. The acrid smell of burning oil and smoke engulfed her. She had forgotten to switch off the oil for frying pappadams. She coughed and rushed to the stove in an attempt to switch the darned thing off. The oil was just a few moments away from catching fire and it wouldn’t be the first time. The walls of her kitchen still showed previous instances of oil catching fire, cookers exploding and at the window sill stood a badly charred saucepan that now functioned as a planter for pudina plants.

Her phone rang somewhere.

Making sure that all the burners were off, Omana picked up the pappadams off the floor, dusted them off on her nightie and kept it on the kitchen ledge before she went to search for her phone. Predictably, it stopped ringing just as she found it, on top of the tv cabinet, between the pages of her accounts book, acting as a bookmark.

She looked at the clock. 8:01 am. Her son was the most punctual boy she had ever had the displeasure of knowing. He called her at 8:00 am every single day though she had tried telling him multiple times that maybe 9:00 am was better, because by then she would have finished kitchen work and would be taking a break, waiting for his uncle’s physiotherapist to come? But Sreedhar had to reach office at 8.20. He left the office at 7.30 in the evening and he had colleagues in the car on his way back. So he couldn't call her then. 8:00 in the morning was the most convenient; for him, and so by default, for her too.

Omana sighed and rang him back.

“Amma” said his voice of routine from the other end.

Omana sat down with some difficulty. Her knees hurt a lot now and the kneecaps and the Volini gels and the hot compresses had stopped making any effect whatsoever.

“I am leaving by 4 today. So I won’t be able to call you for the next four days.” Sreedhar was speaking fast, as he always did. Omana heard the blast of a horn from his end. Always in the midst of Bangalore traffic. Omana tried to remember where Sreedhar was going. If she asked him now, he would bite her head off. She could remember him telling something about a trip but she was not able to remember if it was an official trip or whether he was taking Shyama and the kids along.

“Yes, yes I remember.” She said instead. “When is your flight?” she asked valiantly, trying to jog her memory.

There was a long exasperated silence at the other end. She had messed up.

“Amma, you don’t remember do you? I said I am going to the retreat. Four days of meditation and yoga. Here, in Bangalore itself. We are not allowed phones.”

Oh, yes. The Silent Retreat. How fitting. She had questioned the necessity of such a retreat. After all, he was already so disciplined, so proper. At thirty-five, Sreedhar spoke with the wisdom of a man twice his age, measured and precise. But then, Sreedhar had always been this way; an effort to be as unlike his achan as possible. A wayward drunk who had squandered their money and met a tragic end, falling from a train, intoxicated as always. Yet, Anand had possessed a certain charm, a tenderness that had filled her world. His words, his songs, the way he held her in their narrow bed—the way he could let her forget everything.

“Amma, are you still there?”

“Yes yes mone.”

“Anyway, I am hanging up. Too much traffic today. Tell ammumma I said hello.” A pause, “and Vijaymama too”

Omana sighed. Vijay was Sreedhar’s uncle, Anand’s elder brother. Once a reputed journalist, he was now reduced to a blithering skeleton who needed a wheelchair to get around and a home nurse who came in to change his diapers, give him a bath, change his clothes and come back again at night to sleep on the folding bed so that Vijay could be helped if in case he needed anything at night.

At the breakfast table, the stew soaked idiyappam dripped down from her mother’s lips. Vijay scraped his spoon on the plate trying to get a piece of idiyappam on it. Omana tried to chew as soundlessly as possible. But the stew kept dripping from her mother’s chin and Vijay kept scraping the spoon loudly. Drip drip drip drip. Kraaeak kraaeak kraaeak.

Omana got up to make tea. The Amul carton milk that her son insisted she use instead of the Milma packets was now a week past the use by date. She did not care. She stirred the tea vigorously, poured it into three steel glasses and added an extra spoon of sugar for her mother.

She then sat down on the sofa to enjoy her very milky expired tea with her newspaper. Her silent retreat had been going on for fifteen years now.