Reminiscences of a Daughter

I had thought before it was a coincidence that all this had happened. That it could not have been helped, that the gap between papa and ammi had been too large to let papa be nicer to her. Not leave her way alone how she had been. But that night I found out it was not so. He had left her alone deliberately; when he insulted her it was on purpose. He was taking revenge against the world that had snatched away his Trishu, killed his Beji; and ammi in his eyes represented that world - he was taking revenge against ammi when he said those venomous words to her that night. I remembered ammi’s stricken face when he had turned on her and her crying afterwards, and I hated him for making her so miserable. How was he different from those guys whom he so snootily detested? Both were similar, immured in the world of their dogmas, acting on their prejudices, never knowing never understanding or even trying to understand how that hurt people around them. He indirectly claims to be so sensitive and understanding, but he is not. Could he see, ever, ammi’s pain as I did? He should have, isn’t it? He knew her as well and better. Either he was blind then, or worse, uncaring.

But I don’t think he was blind. He knew well what he was doing, that is why he so revered Atticus. He wanted to be like him - in those times when he fought ammi he was standing up for us against her, redeeming us from her stultifying influence. Ammi would not snatch us away the way Trishu had got snatched. And when ammi withdrew or cried after getting stung by him, he had won. I know it’s comical to put it that way, but I think I am right. He would often bandy lines from Mockingbird at her before trying to hurt her, before aiming at her his poisonous darts. And he had chosen Mockingbird precisely because Atticus didn’t seem real, because there was a mild halo round Atticus that he could appropriate. Speaking about Atticus was his beanstalk, on which he could climb to that seventh heaven where he and Trishu had been - from where he thought he had fallen after he had entered the everyday life of drudgery with ammi, after he had begun hating the world. That’s when I realized Mockingbird was a fairy tale too, a fairy tale that suited his intentions perfectly. A fairy tale that would let him hate the world without bearing the guilt for it. A fairy tale of a perfect Atticus. A tragic fairy tale, but nonetheless a fairy tale. Oh! How he loved it because Atticus was never wrong. Never quivered with fear, never burned with hatred. Never got tripped over by his emotions. Always spoke calmly the most sensible, the profoundest of lines. The paragon of justice, the modern Buddha. But did he ever see the modern Buddha was never tested? That for all of Atticus’ trials, Jem and Scout didn’t die under the knife of Bob Ewell. What would he have done if they had? Still talked about justice, still walked around in the shoes of Bob Ewell, still tried to extenuate the murderer for his blind spots? Perhaps he would have. That’s why he was not real, that’s why papa so loved him. Remember how I made you read the book before you met papa. You must have thought me mad, but I was badly scared. I wanted desperately that he like you, and I thought what if he doesn’t? What if he puts you in category of them? He would never outwardly show his dislike; no that would be unlike what he would think was the right thing to do, what Atticus would have done. After all I was an independent person, he should respect my choice. But he would have detested you all the same, tried to hurt you verbally the way he hurt ammi, tried to make you leave me because you were unsuitable for me. All because he would have thought I was a Trishu and I deserved somebody like him.

Sometimes I hated Trishu. We would be sitting in a room, all three of us, and there would be a deep silence. Even if it was broken accidentally, it would be papa talking to me. Between papa and ammi there was no talk, no exchange of looks or gestures, not even the least pretension to any domestic intercourse. They would always be looking in different directions. Ammi mostly at her work, papa at his books because he was reading something, or if he wasn’t then he would be staring vacantly at the ceiling or gazing out of the window. And I would rage why can’t he look at ammi or talk to her once. You even pay a stranger more courtesy. Or perhaps he only paid strangers more courtesy. Then I would imagine he was thinking about Trishu, dreaming about her, and I would feel a strange helplessness, a stab of pain in my heart. More than that. I wanted to stop him from doing so. Throw a stone and break that invisible mirror in which he was seeing Trishu. Grab his head and turn it towards ammi. Look at her. She’s also nice. Why did you marry her if she wasn’t worth looking at? The least vision of papa and Trishu together would set me wriggling; in throes of a feeling that was indescribable, that would leave me bitter all over. I wanted to get my nails on that vision pouring all my hatred into them, and scratch Trishu out of that vision. How could he dream about somebody who was not ammi? I hated love until I met you.







‘Can you tell me something?’

‘What?’

‘Why shouldn’t Monk hate Agnes, hate Oliver Twist?’