90’s romance
My parents have been married for 28 years and have known each other for 31 years yet struggle to hide their smiles on being asked about how they met and fell in love. I was on a mission today, a mission to know how the city of dreams- Mumbai, yet again had made two people fall irrevocably in love.
Weekend evenings are usually assigned for lazing around, for my brother and I to crack lame jokes, for my parents to discuss some good old memory while I gawk at them in admiration. My parents, like any other married couple, have stuck together through thick and thin, have fought over the silliest of issues, have been upset for hours, have gone without talking to each other for days. I have had my share of doubts each time a new fight broke open, I held onto my heart and wondered what love really meant and what had kept my fighting parents inseparable for all these years. Was it us- their children? Was it societal pressure? Was sticking around worth despite all the differences? I have seen my mother tearing up, my father storming out of the house and I have felt as helpless each time. As I grew up, I distanced myself from their fights, my own set of battles started piling up and just like that, life threw up a new bunch of priorities at me. They had mentioned, change is the only constant. What they had failed to mention was, it is essential for humans to acknowledge this change.
It was 4.30pm on a Sunday, my beloved mother made some soulful chai. I had rehearsed the scene a bunch of times in my head and was all set to ‘action’ it. Over time, I had aced the art of being strategically sly, all I had to do was poke them at the right spots and they would pour their hearts out. As planned, I started with the usual set of questions, “ma, what is happening, give me family gossip. It’s been long, haven’t heard anything” She went on with a set of fresh updates that had time traveled from my aunts. Today, I wasn’t as attentive, the goal was to keep a check on her train of thoughts. The moment my mother started talking about Chennai family, I asked my father about my cousin’s wedding that happened very recently in Chennai. It all looked so staged, only I knew how tough it was to choreograph a conversation while pretending to be interested. Just as I had thought, the very thought of the wedding took my father back in time. My birth hospital was located in the same vicinity where the newly married couple decided to tie the knot. My dear darling father couldn’t stop himself from reminiscing the day when he held me in his arms for the first time. The man had done such a great job at being the amazing father he is, a little had I matched up to his expectations. I had to struggle to keep my focus steady and finally ask him to talk about how it was for him and my mother, the experience of having their first child. My father held my hand and looked straight outside the window with moist eyes, while narrating how it felt to hold a tiny little human in his hands, a piece of him and my mother, a piece of their souls. That’s precisely what we all humans are, generations of accumulated biology and values. No matter how hard we try to keep ourselves distinct from our roots, the branches are ought to grow in the same direction.
While my father was trying hard to hold his tears, my mother played the cool parent role and pretended to be just fine, majorly because I caused her a lot of pain- I had never been an easy child. And just like that, pre-defined gender roles were reversed by my super progressive family. Was I proud or was I proud? My father went on with “Ammama (quite literally, it means mother’s mother, but I was an insecure child who didn’t like sharing her grandmother with her cousins, so I called her what they called her) was around and she too was so happy, you were such a blessing” All this while, my brother was legit fuming and making dirty faces. He is six years younger to me and I tease him often of being the result of absolutely bad family planning. My mother always, almost instantly comes to his defense, stating how both the kids are as important. But today, I was to make sure to stick to the flow, I had to overlook the chaos and keep track of the point of discussion.
After minutes of overflowing love for his first born, I had to drag my father back into the present. The mood was just about right for me to ask him about his beloved. “Appa, you have never told us how you met maa, tell us now please?” My mother chuckled and made a face that read “oh come on, you guys, it’s no big Karan Johar story line” She always gave this reaction followed by blood rushing up her cheeks. My father was in a mood to relive his youth, making life easier for me. “It was the 30th of November 1990 when I confessed my love to your mother”, the man had spoken, my brother and I were glued to my father’s facial expressions and craved for more. “Like every other day, I had gone to Kurla station to drop her. I still remember how I used to always make her wait at the bridge across 9th & 10th platform just so I could talk to her and look at her for a few extra minutes” From the corner of my eye, I looked at my mother smiling and recollecting the lost marshmallows of the 90’s. “On the 30th of November, I told her that I liked her, and she didn’t take any time to reply back” my father sounded excited, he had made my beautiful mother fall head over heels for him just by being himself. Back in the day, my mother had melted a bunch of hearts but ultimately couldn’t keep herself away from my father’s gaze. “I asked her to take a day or two to think it through, but she was sure of me almost immediately. Felt like she was just waiting for me to talk my heart out” I could sense my father’s thumping heart.
“Weekdays used to go by with office work, this one time I had heard our senior advising your mother to write civil service exam and I couldn’t stand the thought of her getting a good score and being transferred to some other department/city” Like every other insecure, possessive and hopeless young lover, my father detested the distance too. I could picture him being all gooey and romantic, dressed in bell bottoms, tucked in shirt and a statement belt, walking towards my mother with a bunch of roses. His eyes were shining while talking and my mother seemed to be validating his progression with frequent nods.
“We didn’t get enough time to spend over the weekdays, so your mother started visiting Siddhivinayak (a popular temple in the heart of Mumbai- Dadar) on Saturdays. I used to meet her at our usual spot at Kurla station and we used to board the train towards Dadar. We never took any public transport from Dadar station to the temple since walking gave us a few more minutes to spend with each other” I couldn’t stop myself from building so many different visuals, a bunch with my mother laughing while my father admiring her, a bunch where my parents are just looking at each other and smiling, a bunch where they are holding hands & crossing the road, I guess being a hopeless romantic is after all a genetic trait.
“It was so difficult to look at your father, he is so tall and looking at him and talking was a task” spoke my mother after minutes of just smiling and blushing. “Back then, at Siddivinayak, they used to give 2 small pieces of coconut for prasaadam, we used to exchange one of our pieces with each other” narrated my father and I almost chocked at the amount of cheese that was flowing in. My mother almost hid her face but later covered up with a laughter while my father took pride in being creative at expressing love. Their stories continued for a little while, but I had to cross over before the questions of life, love and marriage would be targeted at me, so I decided to leave them alone in their cocoon and walk out slowly.
It wasn’t easy to make my parents talk about how they fell in love and decided to walk the path of life together, the generation feels a tad bit apologetic for prioritizing themselves before their own families. After years or persuasion, my parents gave in and considered that their kids were old enough to unapologetically be themselves in front of. I came to my room, stood by the window and mentally conversed with my button rose plant, “no matter how hard the rules of life tend to guide your everyday actions, emotions are bound by the unseen strings of an alien dimension. They exist, they don’t manifest themselves on an everyday basis, but the presence of these unstated and undervalued emotions pushes you through a lifetime.” My parents just like anyone else’s parents, have held onto these emotions and walked over to the countryside, a place where the means of life wasn’t as easily accessible, but the wind blew tenderly and the sky shone brightly, leaving behind a content heart :)
