The L-shaped house with its sloping two-part tiled roofing stood at the end of the road just before the road gave way to the small bridge over river Sukjuda. It basked in the warm glow of the winter sun, exuding peace and quiet.
The master of the house was at work. The children were at school. The lady of the house, a woman in her forties, was home by herself. She was up at the crack of dawn. Having bathed and performed worship of her God, she had cooked the day’s meal. By 10 o’clock, the men folk had eaten and left. Between then and her own mealtime at 2 o’clock was her much needed space for rest and recuperation. Yet she sat sprawled on the floor of her bedroom, hunched over the ‘Samaj’, poring over the columns of print.
Born into a family of small means and large size – she had seven siblings, three brothers and four sisters – she had not progressed beyond her primary school years. An early marriage saw to it that her education didn’t take off. So her way of being graduated was from the newspaper that came to the house daily. And she won’t miss out on it.
“What’re you so engrossed in, Utpala Mausi?” It was customary to affix the name to the kinship term in most Brahminical households in Odisha.
“Oh, it is you!”
Mausi shifted her eyes from the newspaper and turned around to look at me. The front door was ajar and I had let myself in.
“You haven’t gone to school today?”
“No, Mausi. I had an upset stomach in the morning. Maa told me to skip school and rest. Feeling better now. So I came over to check on you. What are you reading so intently?”
“Shall I get you a glass of sherbet?” said Mausi and got up to go to the kitchen next door.
As she returned with a glass of sherbet, she picked up the thread from the last exchange.
“Oh, it is about a woman in Maharashtra who has expressed herself against marriage. She says that marriage means a lifetime of bondage for a woman, and, therefore, she won’t marry. Her people and the entire community are berating her.”
“I’m sure she is acting crazy. What’s your opinion?”
“I think she is right. If a woman in our society could live without having to depend on a man, there is no great need for her to marry.”
“Do you agree with that, Mausi?”
“Yes. But unfortunately there’s no such world where a woman will not need a man for her upkeep and protection. It is a man’s world. So sadly a woman is bound to get married.”
I was bowled over. Mausi had the happiest of homes. Overflowing with deep conjugal love and reverberating with the sweet laughter of their five children, the riverside home of Mausi and Mausa was an abode of bliss, a veritable Baikuntha. Mausi’s homemaking was perfect. That, combined with her tasty cooking and flowing hospitality, made her the epitome of womanhood. She was a woman of great beauty too. Among the black and white framed photos of the family that dotted the wall at right angles to the inner veranda was the photo of a young Mausi. She must have been 16 or 17 then. I always thought that she looked like Vaijayanthimala in the movie ‘Suraj’ or ‘Sangam.’ Later when I saw the black and white ‘Madhumati’, I became doubly sure about the likeness.
For such an essence of femininity to think unfavourably of marriage was baffling, especially as all the shastras declared that it was a woman’s prime duty to marry and beget children, that her supreme fulfillment lay in giving her husband a happy and productive home, which Mausi had accomplished. But she was expounding a view that was contradictory even to common sense, not to mention the shastras, a view which I would know as feminist some twenty years later.
There was no doubting the fact, however, that I had met with a thinking woman for the very first time. And this was not a woman in high society either or a working woman, the latter a rarity in the late 1960s Baripada, anyway. A traditional housewife from a very ordinary, lower middle-class household had shown herself capable of thinking differently. And Mausi retained that streak of speaking home truths until her death last month at the ripe old age of 93.
What I remember and cherish most was how she thought and cared for anyone — yes, anyone, and not just her own children — who had no one to call their own. And who could vouchsafe this better than me, having become such a ‘nobody’ in my infancy due to my mother’s — the person I called ‘Maa’ earlier in the write-up was my Aai — death and again at a crucial stage of my growing up thanks to my failure to demonstrate continuous eye-catching success in life’s trials (read examinations)? And there she was to stand by and assure me, as a true mother would at her son’s travails.
She it was who took the place of my absent mother at the wedding ceremony of our only daughter, to attend which she travelled in a car from Baripada to Bhubaneswar, though wrecked by pain and ailment, under the care and medial ministration of another of her much-loved nephews. It is said that an image speaks sharper and clearer than words. The photograph of Mausi, flanked by the newlyweds, is an eloquent testament to this.
Utpala Mausi was the kind of radiant person who would suggest modification to many myths, embodied in proverbs, and especially one such proverb that does the rounds — ‘Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.’
Thanks to her example, I learned to rewrite it as — ‘Success has many fathers, but failure has only mothers.’
