Amma

30 Jan, 2020

Word Count: 4,322

This is the story of Amma. Amma is an old woman living in a rented apartment on the 12th floor of a posh building. This is how the world—which means a few people who’re still aware of her existence—knows her.

She has a name—which no one has addressed her with in the past several years. She stopped counting her age after a point. Her appearance is that of a usual old person and there’s nothing in the way she walks, talks, dresses, or behaves that could be used to make a distinction.

Amma lives alone, as her only son is settled in the U.S. with a wife and a kid. The last time he visited her was when Amma lost her husband, who also used to be his father. Her interactions with him are limited to the routine of regular questions:

"Have you had your food?"
"Is everything fine at home?"
"How’s health?"
"Are you taking your medicines on time?"
"Is Shanti working fine?"

It’s been long since she had a chat with her daughter-in-law and grandson. Initially, they had a routine of talking on all major occasions, but soon, those occasions became rare, and the communication channel broke.

Her son has arranged—or as they say, taken care of—all the basic amenities and services. She has a fully furnished-sufficiently stuffed apartment, a maid, and a doctor for her own. Her maid Shanti serves her duty three times a day, rarely speaks but exchanges pleasantries—‘Hello, Amma’ and ‘Bye, Amma’— and usually keeps herself restricted to the boundaries of the kitchen. She hasn’t missed a day of her duty in the past year, knows the meal and medicine schedules by heart, and feels no need to surprise the old lady with any change in them. The doctor arrives once a month for a complete check-up, asks the same questions, finds nothing new in the answers, and neither speaks of anything new.

Amma spends her day resting on the recliner with an unfinished sweater in her lap and knitting needles in her hands, staring all-day long at the blank television screen. The sweater’s been in production for so long that she too has forgotten whom she had started knitting it for and is nowhere close to getting it completed.

Initially, she found some interest in watching the TV—which essentially meant hopping from one channel to another for an hour before switching it off—but she soon got bored, and since she was brave enough to accept it, she switched off the TV forever. Now she just stares at the blank screen while concentrating solely on the doorbell speaker’s sound.

She demands nothing, as all she needs—and more than she could ever consume—is already provided. She finds nothing to be happy about, neither anything that could make her angry. Shanti knows her needs better than her and rarely gives a chance to complain. Even when she does, Amma remains least bothered to complain or express anger at her. Simply said, Amma has run out of emotions.

Her only source of interaction is with the doorbell speaker connected to her room. No one has rung that bell in the past year as Shanti carries the keys and the doctor and everyone else come only after consulting with her. But, the bell is in the habit of creating a sound of wires humming sparks a few times a day. So for hours, the buzzing noise created by the bell is the only sound she hears.

Once Shanti had told her that when two wires come in contact, sound like this is created. Since then, Amma is irked that even wires have the pleasure of a companion’s touch, but she didn’t. So she sits in her recliner with a grumpy face, holds her diary and pen, and makes notes of the seconds that sound lasts each day, as this is the only time she feels an emotion—i.e., annoyance. Her diary reads:
…
Tue: 6, 5, 8, 2, 4, 5, 4, 6, 2
Wed: 4, 3, 2, 7, 1, 3, 7, 3, 8
Thu: 3, 7, 4, 2, 6, 9, 4, 3, 7
Fri: 9, 7, 3, 2, 6, 5, 9, 4, 5
Sat: 7, 7, 8, 2, 6, 8, 4, 5, 3
Sun: 8, 4, 3, 7, 4, 4, 9, 3, 4
…
She’s maintaining this diary for the past one year and keeps herself busy with finding a pattern in these digits. Otherwise, she feels no need or motivation to take up any task or to go out, as she has no one or nothing to go out to.

This is her life—like a melody playing in an empty restaurant; being played for the sake of it, without creating any distraction or nuisance; awaiting a pause or an end even to be noticed by anyone.

This never changes, it remains the same even on Sundays.

Today’s another similar evening. Shanti has already left for the day. Amma is in her recliner, awaiting the erring sound to make notes of its timing. She expects nothing from the day, until, she hears the doorbell ring for the very first time. For once, she thinks of it to be her imagination, but as it rings again, she gets herself to believe the truth of it and suddenly feels life flowing through her veins and oozing out of her senses like never before. With the third ring, she finds her center of gravity moving upward and forward as if Mother Earth is pushing her towards the signal that fate has bestowed on her. She feels like a kid that never asked for a wish but is understood so well by her parents that they grant her the surprise of having it come true.

As she gets up, she waits, attentive, with an undisturbed focus, like an archer at the top of his game, only that, she’s the target waiting for the ring to hit her. And before she could even blink, she hears a hand tapping on the wood of the door. For her, this is music; the kind to which one can surrender and let one’s body move freely. With the next thump on the door, she finds herself already moving, with the same urgency as that of the thumping hand, her face beaming with excitement, her legs moving as if they’re being moved for the first time, her fingers feeling every touch she’s making on her way to the door, and the anticipation of something—something—happening for the first time in a duration that feels like a lifetime. She is no longer the target, but the arrow, pushed with the force enough to make it glide.

She reaches the door and holds the doorknob as a lover holds his interest’s hand after a date went well—gently, but with enough force to make the intentions of any further action clear. And as she twists the doorknob open, she becomes witness to the cruel balancing act that nature often plays.

Just how the highest of peaks make way for the deepest of valleys, the on-stage radiance meets the darkness backstage, the act of meaning creation falls in the meaninglessness of all attempts of creation, similarly, her volcano of erupting enthusiasm meets the ocean of unending disappointment. She hears the sound of million waves crashing at once as the sight of Shanti entering the house makes her hope to commit a deadly suicide by jumping from the heights of her lively expectations to the depths of the deadly mundane. Amma, transfixed by shock, and gazing directly at the doorknob, does not even notice as Shanti moves inside the house.

"I left the keys inside, Amma".

Shanti says with no expressions on her face. She searches for the keys and moves back to the door with keys jingling in her hand. Amma remains standing at the door with the doorbell sound still echoing through her mind.

"Bye, Amma".

Shanti says as she leaves her—standing, with the look of someone staring blankly at the ocean—and the door open behind. Amma moves back inch-by-inch as if the ocean is pulling her in, one wave at a time. The look on her face switching from denial to dismay, and finally hitting numb. In a few moments, Shanti comes back swiftly and closes the door with rapid force. The terrific thud of the door acting as a giant wave drowning Amma into the reckless ocean of unconsciousness.

She walks back to the room carrying her body like a feather plucked from a flying sparrow—light, falling, and suddenly devoid of all beauty and life. She sits on the chair with a movement of not sitting at all, as if it’s not a person who’s sitting but a mass that’s filling the chair’s space. The look on her face being of a person already on terms with the constant state of trauma. After a while, she looks at the table and moves to pick her unfinished sweater with remarkable ease in her actions. The actions being that of a well-maintained machine, with levers arranged to complete the designated task without creating a single sound, while being dead and having no life of its own.

But just before she picks the sweater, her diary—open, with all the timings of the bell’s erring noise noted down—catches her eye. It wakes her from the deep slumber of unconsciousness and makes her feel the shock she went through. The realization forces her to pause, making her the arrow floating unguided in the absence of the air it was supposed to travel through. She opens her mouth and clutches the diary with the rush of a drowning person gasping for breath. She keeps the diary in her lap and holds the pen open in the anticipation of hearing the next erring sound. With each moment passing, she waits to feel the annoyance that kept her alive all this while. She finds herself hanging mid-air—between the comfort of balance and the pain of fall—with the hope of getting hold of the crutch that could save her. She waits, with focus and a lot of hope.

Minutes pass, but the bell speaker makes no sound. It remains in its place like a dead weight hanging on the wall. It feels as if the bell had a painful life of its own with each erring noise marking each of its last life-squeezing breaths, and that first ring in all these years being the last sound of the dying bell before taking a new existence.

Amma remains in her place, as the bell doesn’t allow her to move. She keeps staring at the bell with unblinking attentiveness, waiting for it to make a sound. She feels as if she’s being denied her freedom. She finds her soul chained with the discipline to endure the wait of the moment after which she would be allowed to set herself free. Still staring at the bell, she starts to scribble the pen chaotically in response to the nervousness of expecting what she intuitively knows.

"Speak up…", she says with a frown, commanding the bell with a tone of request. But the bell remains as-is.

As another minute passes, the rub of the pen gets harder. The friction of the pen and the paper gets noisy enough to be noticed but remains neglected by her. She glares at the bell and shouts in defiance,

"Speak up, will you?"

But the bell remains silent. Mad with anger, she rubs the pen hard enough to tear through the paper and screams,

"Why don’t you speak up?"

The tone of it being not of a question, but of a threat, the kind that communicates death of either of the two opponents. The frustration finally ticks her off. She applies all the pressure she can and breaks the nib of the pen, making the diary bleed ink.

"So you won’t speak, right?"

She wails and throws the pen and diary away, making stains of her anger reflect on the wall. She pushes the chair behind and gets up in a rage with her hands shaking and finding something to grab. She turns her head in fury and finds an anti-mosquito racket staring at her from the other end of the room. She moves while repeating to herself with a growling voice,

"So you won’t speak, huh?"

"…you won’t speak…"

and picks up the racket. From there, she moves to the bell with the definitive clarity of a rocket, splitting space into halves, utilizing all the fuel it has, propelling to take a journey into darkness, and unfazed by the possibility of never returning. She reaches the bell—face red, drenched with sweat, heartbeats loud and fast— and screams

"S-P-E-A-K U-U-U-P"

with the maximum intensity she can manage, and in one blow, makes the racket land directly on the bell speaker, making it break into several small pieces.

The next day, Shanti enters the room and witnesses Amma dozing on her recliner amidst the surrounding chaos. The floor has broken pieces of the bell speaker, Amma’s pen and diary, and stains of spilled ink. Shanti, frightened by this sight, reaches to Amma and in an attempt to wake her says,

"Amma, Amma"

Noticing a shift, she repeats,

"Amma… Get up, Amma!", now gently, after noticing the calm of her sleep. As Amma gets up, she asks,

"Who did this Amma?"

Amma slowly nods her head in acceptance.

"Why?", Shanti asks, "What happened?" but gets no answer from her. After a brief moment of thought, she asks,

"How did you break this, Amma?"

while picking the broken pieces. Her voice filled with a sense of astonishment by the thought of the force with which the speaker had to be hit in order to be broken into so many pieces.

"Say something Amma", she asks again.

"How did you break it", she asks, looking at the damaged diary as she keeps it back on the table. Amma serves her with no answer. She keeps collecting the pieces, with a sense of growing irritation.

"Aaahh", she squeaks as one small piece pierces her sole.

And she shouts, "Amma, how did you break it", almost in response to her pain.

"With the…" Amma—in shock with the sudden break in the character of the ever-passive Shanti— attempts to reply.

"With what?" Shanti asks again, calming herself down by pushing the words out.

"With the… with the… chit-chitter", Amma responds while falling short on words.

"With what?" asks Shanti while settling on the floor with a tickle of amusement.

"With this", and Amma picks up the Anti-mosquito racket having cracks due to last night’s encounter.

"Na Na… What did you call it before?"

"Chit-chitter", Amma responds with hesitation. Shanti first chuckles and then breaks into relentless laughter. She laughs as if she cares for none and as if this is her moment of escape from the instruction-manualesque life she has.

Amma watches her laughing in disbelief. This is the first time in months she’s witnessing a genuine human emotion. An outburst of joy when she expected irreverence or anger. Catching the infectiousness of Shanti’s laughter, Amma also starts to laugh. The sound of her laughter is that of the thawing ice. She savors the joy of being with someone, not just in a physical sense, but emotionally. In those moments, they remain just as two humans, together for the fun of togetherness, breaking the shackles of their class divide.

After a minute or so, Shanti gets up and starts arranging the room in order. Amma sits silently, looking at the broken anti-mosquito racket. Once done, Shanti says,

"Call me if you need anything, Amma. Don’t break things, they might hurt you. Now I’ll have to give an answer for all of this" and leaves the room with a broad smile, saying, "And don’t worry, I’ll get you a new Chit-chitter, okay?"

Amma nods and smiles with gratitude for these unexpected moments of joy. This is the longest she has smiled ever since she can remember. She chants the word chit-chitter to herself countless times like an ascetic with the realization of divine encounter chanting the name of his God with the belief of being able to meet him again.

After a while, she grabs her diary, takes out a new pen, and turns the page to start afresh. She writes,

Then she looks around, and writes,

And after some thought, she smiles to herself, and fills it with,

She keeps looking around and adds further,

With each new word, she pumps new life in herself. She smiles at each addition and laughs at a few. Then she re-reads the written ones and laughs again. She spends hours creating new terms for anything she thinks or sees around. The terms mostly being combination or cute or witty remixes of the already existing words.

The next day, she gets up with fresh enthusiasm and greets herself with a new sense of delight. Her manner of getting up not being of an old lady at the dawn of her life, but of a teenage girl waiting to conquer the world with her charm. She spends the day with curiosity, thinking of new terms, and making mental notes of them. She gets annoyed as she forgets a term she wants to remember and winks with triumph once she reminds herself of it again. Once done, she notes them, comes out of her room and tries them on Shanti. She asks her to cut a bum-fruit, and feels jubilant when Shanti smiles after she points to an apple in explanation.

When her son asks,

"What did you have for dinner?"

she replies with,

"Dalmatian dough with Protein Pills"

and makes him smile by showing her plate having Chapati and Pulses.

She asks the doctor if she wants to have some Sleeping Cs, and manages to make her smile by passing a bowl full of roasted cashews.

Encouraged by everyone’s responses, she spends more time working than usual. She recreates her world with the terms she decides. In her terms, her usual morning includes, getting up from the yawnfarm, wearing flatfeet, going to the pissing pond, moptiling her marble bits with a scratchhead, then moving to her spinefree, pouring firefluid from the teahive into the teakeeper, and sipping it with joy. The meaning of those terms being:

Amma—in love with the process—uses all the terms with equal enthusiasm. She nurtures them like her kids, regardless of her own favorites and prejudices. She improvises and updates—and in the process messes up—a lot of her own terms. She names a wall clock ‘two-timer’, and when she notices a digital clock set in 24-hours format, instead of re-working on clock’s name itself, she names the digital one ‘one-timer’.

Her audience also responds to the improvisations accordingly. Shanti grins when she hears ‘two-timer’ but cordially ignores the other one. Her son acts indifferent when she calls a diary, ‘ink-sewer’, but feels relieved when she updates it to ‘word-estate’.

Amidst these games, in a matter of a few days, her terms start to lose their element of surprise. They do not provoke laughter anymore. The occasional wittiness does get appreciated, but the lame ones meet their destined fate. Gradually, Shanti gets used to the terms and ignores anything that comes her way with a consoling smile and her son gets back to his apathetic slumber after these few days of responsiveness.

Noticing the drop in everyone’s response, Amma starts to think of the reason that made everyone respond for the first time and works extra hard. She starts creating terms having no meaning of their own. She says ‘Loomoo’ instead of ‘Hello’ and ‘Ovoye’ instead of ‘Bye’. For her, a ‘bulb’ becomes a ‘whaz’ and a ‘switch’, an ‘palter’.

Soon, the wings of her imagination start uprooting her from the ground of reality. She often ends up mixing two words or using terms meaning nothing at all. One afternoon, she asks Shanti to ‘stric the window’, when she meant to ask her to ‘clean the mirror’. She asks her son to stop ‘owling’ when she was concerned about his ‘habit of staying awake the whole night’.

The more she creates in the present, the more she forgets of the past. Each old original word giving space for a new term to be added.

In a few days, her terms become a species of their own. Her language now is like the new skin of a snake; same body, same core, but with different texture and appeal. The problem is its effect. Its effect being that of a non-poisonous snake whose sting is only able to get a response and make a few heads turn, but not potent enough to leave any lasting impact. But unaware of this, Amma stays persistent with her attempts.

She pushes further by creating not just terms for existing objects but creating new objects and people in order to name them. In her head,

Yenton is the person whose duty is to run the two-timer.

Jicket is the object used for cleaning the insides of a rod.

Plick is the guard of the word-estate.

Mevet is a machine used for flattening the floor.

Yepel is the place of worship where people go and Yep.

And many more such terms, the meaning of whose is known only to her and her diary. For her, this is still fun and she giggles to herself after adding a term. But her listeners—who used to initially please her with an occasional smile or an understanding nod—are clearly out of sync and confused with the new terms. At first, they try to remain patient, but soon, their frustration grows to the point of annoyance and they end up responding in displeasing ways.

When her son asks,

"How’re you, Amma?"

she responds with ‘plupping yitty’—meaning ‘Doing fine’—and gives his anger an outlet. He bursts out saying,

"If you don’t want to talk, then tell directly no, Amma… What’s the point of all this drama?"

Even Shanti—able to understand only a little of what she says—run out of patience and declares,

"I’ll complete all the work, Amma. You don’t take any stress", which in simpler terms means, ‘Don’t bother me’, when she asks her to ‘jicket si trile’, i.e. to clean the insides of the pipe of the sink.

Amma, bewildered with the violent nature of responses fails to understand the point of fault. For her, this is a downward spiral coming not as an avoidable windstorm, but as an all-destroying hurricane. The implications are such that even after feeling the urgency of the situation, she tries to settle it by working even hard, and in turn, making the matters worse for herself.

She often thinks to herself, ‘Maybe the fault isn’t mine’—as she is still enjoying the process of creation—and hopes for a new set of audience to try her terms with.

One day, a new guy enters the house to replace the broken doorbell speaker in her room. She waits for him to finish his work, and once done, takes the opportunity and greets him with,

"Yudlu pa placking si brunger, yishi chint", meaning—or intending to mean—"Thank you for fitting the doorbell, my child".

She expects him to greet back with a hearty response—like the first responses she’d got from others—but the guy’s irreverent look fills her with utter disappointment. He asks her,

"What did you say?"

Amma tries to decipher what the sentence ‘What did you say?’ means, but couldn’t. She vaguely remembers the meaning of ‘say’, but other words make no sense to her. She stands there with a look of confusion floating on her face. She tries to ask him what the other words mean but ends up blabbering further gibberish. She waits without an explanation until Shanti intervenes and settles the matter. The day marks the end of meaning for her.

Soon, her new language takes over the remaining belongings of her past. Her creation takes her to the point of no return. For her, whatever she hears are all strange sounds. She tries to go back to her diary to re-enable herself with general understanding but finds no solace there. Any memories of the past understanding are now like the realizations of a past life. She’s aware of its existence but doesn’t know a way to reach or understand it. She tries to communicate to the best of her ability, but for the listeners, whatever she speaks remains plain nonsense. They are not able to make any sense of what she’s speaking, even when they try. For her, she’s speaking her truth, only to prove that not all truth means virtue. After a lot of push and pull, all her interactions finally hit a dead end. The routine calls with her son drop to once-in-a-while interactions, and Shanti shows no interest in any conversation whatsoever. Finally, she completely loses sync with the language and with life.

Amma is back to her recliner with the unfinished sweater in her lap, knitting needles in her hand, staring all day long at the blank TV screen. She has her closed diary and pen at the table.

There’s a new bell installed. It never rings and neither makes any sound. Amma is alone.

Notes by Author:

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#loneliness #old age