Appa’s Tenth Day by Vijayalakshmi Sridhar
In wet clothes, I am sitting cross-legged on the floor—the fan of Amma’s nine-yards grazing her legs—calves with bulging blue veins and heels that are cracked like a desert floor within my viewing range. All these years the result of running to and from the kitchen bringing not just idli or vada but rasa vangi and poricha koottu and payasam, piping hot, coming to our schools in her workwear—a still-wet saree—attending to contingencies, emergencies—the legs had seen it all.
“The tenth day is when the departed soul revisits its family, to check on the relationships it has left back in the world,” the vadhyar is trying his best to get us involved. The ceremony has already been tedious—with non-stop rituals, food, and give-aways. Appa has joined his ancestors’ photo lineup on the wall.
All these nine days Akka, Athais, Perimmas and Chithis left her alone to go to the other side. Making delicate soppu out of the Kozhukattai maavu, with bell-like hands, deftly closing it with the Poornam. The store room key is jingling on the cook Maami’s waist; she is monopolising the day’s menus. Appa’s brothers keep pulling a veshti and tee shirt and talcum from his cupboard like they own it. Should she be ideal and stop them or be practical and let them?
“By the book, her widowhood begins at midnight. From then on, you—the son becomes the official guardian of the family,” the vadhyar completes his duty.
“Amma is unlike Appa; She will be fine. Get out of her way,” my wife warns, as if she can read my mind.
Akka places a bright green saree—lights an oil lamp in Amma’s room—leaving her alone to say goodbye to her husband of fifty-two years. “Assure him we are all going to be fine; and to move on,” an elderly Athai calls on and Amma looks visibly shot down.
The night is lukewarm, with a flurry of stars in the sky and lots of moving clouds. I can’t wait for the tenth day to end. When the house settles, I climb down the steps.
Amma is startled to see me. I kneel, sit on my haunches. The lamp casts lengthy shadows of us on the wall. I stop her as she reaches to remove her thali—her wedding chain that ceases to make sense with her husband’s death.
“Amma. Don’t bother about anything. You are a free bird from now on. It is your world, your canvass, your choices,” I say, only to see her brows knot in confusion. I decide to explain it the way she will understand.
“Imagine you have nei-paruppu and choru. What else will you make to complete the meal?”
“Koottu, curry, appalam, mor,” she pipes in, without missing a beat, her eyes teary-bright.
I wrap my arm around her bony shoulders. “That’s where you are now. It’s time to fire up.”
Though Vijayalakshmi Sridhar writes from Chennai, a coastal city in South India, she feels very much a part of the digital literary world on social media. Her works of fiction have been nominated for both Best Small Fiction and Pushcart.
