Jerry Pinto - Em and the Big Hoom

Both of us were startled.

‘What happened? You going to do it again?’

‘No, no. I’m superfine. No, no, actually, I’m not. Or maybe I’m not. But Sarah-Mae says it’s a Growth.’

Sarah-Mae had few charms but she was a skilled nurse, when she wasn’t drunk. She was born one of triplets, who had been lifted out from their mother, two of them conjoined at the head. It was also said that she had a black tongue, which meant that if she predicted something terrible it would come true. Of all the triplets, Sarah-Mae had had the worst time. Early on, she had sacrificed her left ear to Olivia-Mae because they were the two joined at the head — by the ear, and only one of them could have it. So Sarah-Mae’s word was to be taken seriously.

Em was taken to a gynaecologist who suggested various tests and then an operation.

‘At the J. J. Hospital,’ said Em.

The Big Hoom suggested a drive that evening. He drove around the city with Em, late at night, when they had something to talk about or when everyone needed a break from her.

They came back hours later to find both of us awake.

‘Let’s have a cuppa,’ said Em.

‘What’s happening?’

‘She’s going to J. J.,’ said The Big Hoom.

Em began to boil some tea.

‘When?’ Sue asked.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Em and then she began to sing. ‘It’s now or never, come hold me tight…’

The Big Hoom went up and hugged her. We drank our tea quietly.

‘If I die under the knife,’ said Em suddenly, ‘give whatever you can to whoever you can.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Meaning, me bits and bobs. I don’t want to be worm fodder. My bits would like a second chance. Someone looking out through my eyes. Someone loving with my heart. Someone having a good lash out with my liver.’

‘Okay,’ said The Big Hoom.

• • •

The next morning, they were gone and Granny was frying bacon and eggs when we got up.

‘Come,’ said Granny.

We sat down.

‘They are thissing,’ she said, ‘we can only thissing.’

We enjoyed praying with Granny. She prayed in a mellifluous mess of syllables. The first half of the Ave Maria was reduced from ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus’ to ‘Hail Meh fluh grace loswiddhee blessdaathou blessdfroo thaiwoom Jee-zus…’ It was difficult not to giggle. If she noticed, it did not seem to bother her. She slurred on, simply slowing the words down. Perhaps they did not make sense to her, which wouldn’t have been unusual.

That morning, however, we weren’t giggling, or thinking about the meaning. We were simply praying. For our Em. We were not praying for her mind. We had not given up doing that, but we were losing hope that prayer could be part of the solution. We were praying for her body and it occurred to me that we had never had occasion to, before this. (‘Strong as a horse,’ Susan said when I pointed this out and for a week or so we called her The Horse.)

I tried to look now at the words we were saying and I could not see how they matched our needs. We seemed to be as anachronistic as a shaman in an operation theatre. We were indulging in some old ritual, some practice devised more for us than for her.

Em made a full recovery. The growth was large but benign and in order to prevent any recurrence, they took out her ovaries as well.

‘Just call me the Female Eunuch,’ she laughed, as she pulled on her first beedi in three weeks.

‘Do you really mind?’ Sue asked.

‘I don’t know. I’ll let you know,’ said Em, in a rare moment of uncertainty about her own feelings. ‘But right now, they’re saying I’m over with menstruation and I can only say, Callooh-Callay! If the hot flushes and emotional instability start, that’s another matter. Who wants a hot flush? Who wants emotional instability? It sounds like something from a Mills & Boon, and at the wrong end of my life, too. And now, we can have sex without worrying about the consequences.’

She never alluded to it after that. I remember wondering if she would be calmer now. When I was growing up no one ever talked about PMS or anything like that, so this was not a scientific thing. It was some atavistic throwback to the time when hysteria was believed to be seated in the uterus. And since science will eventually win through, we never did see a change in her cycles after her hysterectomy. She went on being Em. She went on trying to kill herself. So when the old man knocked on the door, one morning in May, we thought the worst.

Susan answered the imperious knocking.

‘Your mother,’ said the old man.

Susan went from bleary-eyed to alert. She woke me and I woke The Big Hoom and we ran down into the street. Em was lying in the street, a bottle of milk shattered close to her arm, which was awkwardly bent next to her.

‘It wasn’t me,’ she said and smiled before she passed out.

We carried her home, The Big Hoom and I, and then we called Dr Saha.

‘Broken,’ said Dr Saha, who had learnt that words were not much use when diagnoses were needed.

‘Fracture?’ The Big Hoom asked.

‘Broken,’ said Dr Saha again. I had always thought it was the same thing. It wasn’t. A broken arm required surgery and a pin to be put in and another scar running down Em’s arm.

‘He came at me like a bat out of hell,’ she said later. ‘I always look left, look right, and all that. But then there he was — ’ She stopped abruptly. ‘The milk bottle?’

Milk bottles were precious things back then. You couldn’t get milk out of the rationing system if you didn’t produce your bottle, nicely washed.

‘It’s all right,’ Susan said.

‘Liar,’ said Em. ‘How could it have survived? I felt it fly out of my hand and then I was out like a light. Anyway, I appreciate the thought.’

We all knew what that meant. She would remember that bottle for years. She would worry about the loss of it when she was depressed and it would translate into a new worry about what we would eat and who would cook it. Her mind was like that: a sponge for troubles. Events turned into omens; carelessly uttered phrases into mantras.

But as she aged, the process of accretion, the rate of accretion slowed down.

‘It’s age,’ Dr Michael said. ‘The highs will get lower; the lows won’t be that bad.’

We couldn’t see it but we clung to this hope; that things were getting better. And maybe they were, for three full years passed without her trying to kill herself. Then, suddenly, death turned around and claimed her.

I was spending the night at a friend’s home when he called. We had gone to watch a film, we had had a nice meal. Em was going through a manic phase but with both Susan and The Big Hoom in attendance, I was allowed out of the house. I did not sleep that night; I never did in anyone else’s home. It was too much of a novelty and I wanted to savour every moment of it. I told this to Susan once and she said, ‘I go to sleep almost immediately at sleepovers. It’s so nice not to worry.’

When the phone rang in another home, for some reason, I knew it was for me.

‘She’s gone,’ he said and his voice seemed to have no emotion in it, a dry shell where once a rich and milky grain had been.

‘Did she…?’

But I found I could not ask whether she had killed herself.

‘No,’ he said.

It was too early to disturb my hosts. I left quietly, and when I stepped out of the building there was even a part of me that enjoyed the cool breath of the half-night upon my face. The taxi home sliced through the suburbs, over roads free of traffic. Here and there, the bodies of other Mumbaikars lay, in what looked like positions of death. And then I was in Mahim, so quickly, I hadn’t even thought about this. What did it mean? Em not around?