An old quarantine
At a 14-day quarantine in her childhood home, Aarthi Seshadri finds her mother stranded at the door offering food and reassurance from a permissible distance. The door has now become a telling analogy of their relationship in the recent past.
Illustration by Radhika Kedia
“Hi. Have you reached the airport? Don’t forget your passport.”
“Do you have sanitizer?”
“Check-in done?”
“I hope your flight does not get cancelled again.”
“Where are you? Keep washing your hands.”
“God bless.”
Amma’s relentless messaging on March 18, 2020 makes my phone vibrate. The vibration is unsettling, it’s unnerving. These are COVID-19 times: the world seems bleak and human beings have reached the peak of paranoia. After patiently waiting in Bali airport and two harrowing days of travel, I have finally landed in Mumbai.
“Landed aa?”
“Hope they let you step out.”
“Appa and I are waiting in the car. We’ll follow your cab.”
“Wash hands and come.”
“Will give you oranges, biscuits, and buttermilk in a bag.”
“Take it. Please don’t say no.”
Amma continues her texts and as usual, my fingers find it taxing to respond to her messages. I pass all the health tests and walk out of the airport. I see Amma and Appa, wave at their relieved faces and hesitantly take the bag of snacks and step into a cab. While the cab driver shares his understanding on the pandemic, my mind drifts into thoughts of how I will deal with Amma during the self-imposed quarantine. I tell myself that I should take a minimum of four days before I snap at her. I can’t tell when I reach home and fall asleep but I remember waking up to MS Subbalakshmi chanting ‘kausalya supraja rama purva sandhya pravartate’. I can almost imagine her yelling, “Aarrthiii, 7 am, school, get up, now!” I can hear her laughing like tinkling bells in harmony with the cooker whistle and that holy smell of pongal soaked in ghee! It is one of my fondest childhood memories.
There are many memories with Amma that evoke a wide range of emotions. Some are innocent and some are cold. As the smell of the ghee dances around my nose, I run to the kitchen to steal a bite of pongal. I stand by the door, with a plate in my hand. “Only after you shower,” Amma says and smiles. I make an angry face at her and a mental note - When I grow up, the first thing I’ll learn is to make pongal so I won’t have to wait by the kitchen door. As the several fights with the siblings ensue on who will shower first or who will use the mirror, I see Amma waiting by the door holding three plastic lunch bags with steel tiffin boxes and water bottles covered with neatly folded napkins. This is her chance to stand at the door and sulk at me. Amma zooms to school in a hip Kinetic Honda with the three of us as if she made a pact with the Lord that her kids will never be late to school. We scurry into school and I turn around to say goodbye to Amma standing by the gate.
Over the years, a lot of interesting facts about Amma unravel. Of how she looks like Tabu in her college pictures; of how she falls in love with her first cousin (my Appa) and creates a scandal in the family, of how she aspires to study nutrition but chooses love over career, of her complicated first delivery, me, of her resilience whenever Appa and she would break into an argument. Her fearlessness isn’t surprising. But her hypocrisy towards societal concepts is.
One evening, after school, I nervously moved to the kitchen door to ask her for an explanation for these new feelings in my heart. As I soak in the smell of the ghee that was being neatly spread on the dosais, I tell her about my feelings for my newly formed crush. Her face turns a shade that magically matches the colour of the red chutney. But she composes herself and shares that love is a distraction one creates in their minds. She shares how it can cause rifts in friendships and warns me about entering that world. There were some other absurd reasons like how it stops you from scoring a hundred percent in your exams. As she was making her closing statement, she dropped a dosa on my plate. Suddenly, the smell of that same ghee is less comforting.
The smell of that ghee becomes bitter through the years. Her idea of what a growing chubby child must wear and eat and the boys I should talk to and her control over my timelines was suffocating. After weeks of convincing Amma and Appa about choosing Hotel Management as my career, I decided to move cities for college. I avoid all her motherly instincts to help me pack and swiftly move to another room when she wants to have her last few conversations with me. I don’t remember the smell of that last pre-college pongal ghee. But I remember her hazy figure, standing by the doorstep to say her goodbyes. I dragged my bags out of the house before she could even speak. I didn’t look back. I lost the smell of the ghee but I could smell freedom.
I left her a message when I made my first pongal in college.
“Hi.”
“How are you?”
“I made pongal for the first time. People liked it I think. But it’s not the same.”
“I think I miss you.”
“I hope you’re doing well.”
Her words echo in my heart as I dramatically look up:
“Dear daughter, nothing remains the same except for the vast blue sky.”
The two knocks on my door make me shift in my bed. I shake off the thoughts that have trailed past my mind and focus on MS Subbalakshmi continuing to sing the suprabhatam. I hear the second set of knocks. Amma opens the door gently like she is on room service duty. She presents a plate of hot pongal with fried cashew nuts and a huge dollop of, that’s right, ghee. The smell wades through my room and I hear her laughing like tinkling bells. There she is, standing at the doorstep, offering me this holy pongal. Through these 14 days, I have seen my mother exercise her control over me with great childish pleasure. Almost like she reclaimed the role of the quintessential Amma. And I have seen myself exercise so much control over my responses to her, with great adult-like strength. The image of her standing at the doorstep, day in and day out, to serve food, have a conversation, ask about well-being melts my heart. Have we really quarantined each other all our lives? I can sense the bitter smell of ghee transitioning back into a comforting one.
It has been eleven years since I’ve stayed away from Amma. Both of us have conveniently placed each other at the doorstep. Especially when we talk about my weight or my marriage. Intentionally or unintentionally, we had not let each other take a step into our respective lives. After successfully completing the self-imposed quarantine, my mother knocks on the door to present her last room-service order.
“Amma, you can step inside the door, you know?”
Aarthi works as an Education Consultant in the development sector. Rahman's music, rasam and sarees are her favourite things to indulge in.