by Vani Viswanathan
Sirisha sighed with relief as she pushed the airport trolley to a corner and sat down. The trolley had three large suitcases, each bursting to their seams. And two duffel bags, two similarly-coloured ladybug backpacks and her own red purse sitting like a cherry on the ungainly cake of baggage. Thank god Amma was around… Sirisha could never have managed Abhi and Aarabhi by herself. Despite Amma helping them in their big move back to India from Austin, Sirisha acutely felt Somesh’s absence as she wound up 11 years of life in a different country. Part of her cursed his luck that he had to move weeks before they did, and even as she knew he was “busy” house-hunting in Gurgaon, she’d much rather have had him helping with the packing here, deciding what to throw and what to keep, and finally, managing their extremely active girls through it all.
Sirisha caught her reflection at one of the glass panes of the boarding gate: she looked frazzled, her hair astray, bags under her eyes, and her sweat pants didn’t make it any better. A moment was all she got to wallow in self-pity – on the reflection she saw Abhi stray away from the water cooler, which was as far as she’d been permitted to go. “Abhi! Abhi! GET BACK HERE NOW!” said Sirisha, as quietly and firmly as she could. She would not become one of those typical Indian parents who let their children loose in airports and then yell at them half-heartedly. Even as Abhi trudged back, disappointed at being caught, her sister Aarabhi had moved on to a vending machine nearby and was banging on the casing near where her favourite candy was kept. Frustrated by the noise – and the alarmed looks of her co-passengers – Sirisha got up and dragged Aarabhi back.
By now Abhi had wandered off to the ramps near the escalator and – Sirisha did a double take – was now sliding down the smooth floor. Aarabhi ran off to join her sister. Sirisha slumped on her seat, fighting to hold back her tears. She didn’t want to wake her mother; the poor woman was tired and had dozed off seconds after reaching the gate. Let the girls create a riot, she thought, as she heard Aarabhi’s high-pitched squeal of joy. She was going back to India, after all, where children were a nuisance in public. Parents, and people, in general, didn’t seem to bother about how their children were making things difficult and uncomfortable for others in public. Kids cried or whined all the time, spilled food, ran about unchecked, stamped on other people’s feet and weren’t taught effectively that they had to apologise.
But Sirisha knew it was never always like that. She and her sister, for instance, always listened to their parents, at least in public. That was a given; a solid stare from their mother, or their name called out by their father in his deep, rumbling voice, and they’d drop what they were doing. They wouldn’t have dared wander from the strict boundaries their parents had imposed for them, especially in posh places like airports (which were posh and a rare site of visit when she was a child!) Their hours were spent playing “word building” and “name-place-animal-thing”, and the most nagging that she remembered doing was asking her parents “When will we leave?” For the most part, they would be quiet, both at the airport and aboard the plane, generally in awe of being privileged enough to fly on a plane, even if it was only once every four years when their father could claim it from his employers.
Sirisha thought about how her children would never know what that kind of privilege meant. What that kind of obedience or respect to parents meant. Her daughters were now loudly counting the number of planes that they could see through the glass windows of the gate. She closed her eyes, just for a minute, just for a minute, please…
***
Lakshmi opened her eyes. Sirisha seemed to have dozed off. Lakshmi’s eyes wandered to see where the kids were. They were gleefully pointing at the planes through the glass windows. Poor Sirisha, she thought, looking at her hassled daughter. The girl who was the prim-and-proper queen of their family, now in the airport in her night clothes (what did she call them? Sweats or something!)
Lakshmi knew how tired her daughter got handling the two active, blooming girls. The fact that they were twins made it all the more difficult for Sirisha; she didn’t have the luxury that Lakshmi had had bringing up Sirisha when her first one was four years older and manageable.
Lakshmi chuckled as she watched the twins ride up the escalator. She knew she had to be concerned, so she walked up to them and followed them up and down the escalator. This act brought back memories, memories that made Lakshmi laugh now but had driven her crazy with worry back in those days.
It had been on a flight from Madras to Calcutta that went via Bombay, for some odd reason. Flights weren’t all that frequent then; so they had been subject to two take-offs and two landings, all of which had made Sirisha cry and throw up, twice. All this was exacerbated by the excruciatingly long halt in Bombay, which was due to a bomb scare at the airport. Sirisha, then a five-year-old, kept crying out of hunger. The airline people had yet to make arrangements for food for the delayed and hungry passengers. Lakshmi carried a piece of cake that she had slyly pushed into her bag during the previous flight journey, but a sniffer dog was being led to all passengers’ bags. Lakshmi had been sick with worry and embarrassment as to what would happen if the dog had sniffed out the food (thankfully, it didn’t!) Cake in her tummy, Sirisha got a new lease of life and had insisted on riding up and down the escalators a dozen times with her sister. Now, as Lakshmi hopped on to the escalator with ease with her twin grandchildren, she remembered how she used to be amazed at her own children’s daring; at 35, she’d been terrified of the odd escalator she came across at airports or the Spencer’s Plaza in Chennai.
Sadhana, her older daughter, was quiet and responsible, but Sirisha was hot-headed and hard to handle. Be it her fascination for the engraved plastic cutlery on the plane, her question of “Are we there yet?” every ten minutes, the way she strutted up and down the aisles, her confident replies when the air hostesses smiled and asked her questions sweetly… her brashness would have Lakshmi anxious all the time. What trouble Sirisha had been! She remembered telling her that Sirisha would understand when she had children of her own… oddly, she felt as if she was responsible for Sirisha’s state now.
Going down the escalator for the 14th time with the twins now, she said “Ok, enough, girls! Let’s go wake Amma up. It’s time to board.”
Sirisha woke up with a jolt. “I didn’t even realise I’d dozed off! Amma… why do these two trouble me so? Why can’t they be like what I was as a child…quietly listening to you and Appa…?” Lakshmi suppressed the cruel chuckle that rose up her throat.
