Er..Another Scene- Scene 3

This would be the last time I'll post a scene from my manuscript on the blog. I still haven't managed to find the time to write a decent post. Next post will be a regular one, I promise.


"In the past two years I had got six of them but each time I had somehow managed to convince Ma that I wasn’t cut out for the job it offered. She had sulked but I succeeded in holding on to my current job inventing various excuses. Though not hair that can be combed I was blessed with a lively imagination and was able to think of some pretty good excuses. But as the envelopes started coming regularly once every few months, Ma’s sulks and threats became equally regular and bigger. Her one constant refrain was that I should settle down in a decent job and get married so she would have grandchildren to play with. Here I was, twenty five years old but still a kid in many ways and Ma was thinking of my kids.

She came out of the kitchen and sat at the table to watch me eat. She was about sixty, my frail mother, hair that had turned white overnight after dad’s sudden death. She was a shadow of her former self. When dad was alive she was beautiful and lively. Now she looked thin, haggard and tired. She looked like a patient. In fact she was a patient with imaginary illnesses. She fell sick frequently but wouldn’t go see a doctor. She told me quite often that if it weren’t for me she would have killed herself the moment dad had breathed his last. Whenever she said it I always felt very sad. The way she looked at me with those mournful eyes I expected her to say it now again.

‘Neel,’ she began in a soft voice. She called me by that silly name when she wanted me to do something I was absolutely not willing to do.

‘What?’ I asked, looking up at her sharply. I was irritated that she had served me more than I could eat. I had once again got the only wobbly plate in the kitchen. I was getting late for office and it also looked like it would rain any moment.

‘Nothing,’ she mumbled quietly and lowered her head. She wiped her eyes with the corner of her sari. I felt sorry for her. I was the only one she had in the world and I was being stubborn. But she was no less rigid herself.

‘What is it, ma?’ I asked again, this time in a softer voice.

‘Didn’t your father too have that kind of a job? Wasn’t he happy with it?’ she asked, nodding her head in an agitated manner.

‘Was he?’ I asked, raising my eyebrows. Dad had died suddenly more than ten years ago when I was preparing for my medical entrance test. I lost my father when I needed him the most. This became a trend in my life. People would disappear from my life when I felt I needed them badly. Dad was an engineer, a hardworking man but he was too sensitive and straightforward. He was unhappy with his job at the Secretariat. It showed on his face when he came home from his office every day. I also heard him tell Ma every day that he hated the inefficiency, the laziness, the petty politicking and the corruption. I guess it was something like that that killed him, not the hypertension everyone thought was the reason for his untimely death.

Ma looked at me but I was silent, lost in the thoughts of my wonderful father who loved me more than anyone else in the world. He had a lot of pet names for me and never refused me anything. I had asked him once if I could become a truck driver and he had said I could, an indulgent smile on his face.

‘You are so stubborn,’ she said, ‘just like him.’ She looked up at dad’s black and white photograph on the wall.

When dad was alive she would always say, ‘Why aren’t you like your father? See how organized he is, see how he goes out to meet his friends whereas you sit at home reading those useless film magazines all day.’ But soon after his death her refrain changed. She said I was just like my dad every time I refused something or was being ornery.

But of course, Ma was right. I was like dad in many ways. I even looked like him except for the hair. I was tall, thin and plain looking. She said I talked like him, walked like him, and even sneezed like him, loud and continuously. I also inherited his love for books, his depression, his sinusitis and maybe, his sense of humor. But I wasn’t clever like him or so gregarious. I was dumb which maybe one reason why I had so few friends. Just two, in fact, Mani and Venu.

Mani was now in the United States doing an advanced journalism course and Venu, my dumb friend, was working as an Agricultural Officer in the Government. It was the same job I was trying to avoid doing.


‘I’ll look at it later. I have to go back to the agency now,’ I told mom and held out the envelope. But she did not take it. She gave me an accusing stare as I threw it back on the dining table. Mom had the kind of look mothers in movies give to grown up sons who aren’t obeying their dictum to either get married or get a decent job.

‘This is the last time I am going to repeat it. I’ll never do that job.’ I said, and stepped out of the house.


It was the last thing I wanted to do, work for the Government. I wish I had paid the postman the money he had asked for handing over the envelopes to me personally. But I did not want to bribe the jerk. He made it appear as if he was doing me a favor by giving me the envelopes at the post office itself. Whereas I thought I was doing him a favor avoiding him the long trudge to our house to deliver the letter. He wanted two hundred rupees, the oily creep. Of course, I did not pay him. I wouldn’t do any such thing.

‘Wait until it stops raining, you will catch a cold,’ Ma called out after me as I rode out in the drizzle. I turned back to see her standing in the doorway, the envelope in her hand, looking forlorn."