The Eminently Forgettable Life of Mrs Pankajam

by Meera Rajagopalan

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Fated to do and to die,only to remember,then forget –why try?Mrs S. Pankajam has always lived two lives: one of ordinary fulfilment in her experiences as a wife to her husband and a mother to her two daughters, and the other a life of desires and sharp observations that only her mind is privy to.When Mrs Pankajam starts losing her memory, her doctor recommends she keep a diary to maintain a semblance of continuity in life events. At first, she is reluctant. What is so spectacular about her life that warrants its story being recorded, she wonders. But as she sets pen to paper, meticulously documenting the revelations that her daughters (well past their teens now) continue to subject her to, the discovery of her husband’s eccentricities and her own guilty admissions to indulgences that may have caused his cardiac arrest, she finds her childhood persistently wrestling with the present as a marked reminder of a past she cannot run away from. A witty and touching tale about a declining mind trying to make sense of an ever-changing world, Meera Rajagopalan’s finely crafted novel is one that challenges the reader to confront long-held beliefs and make amends while it is still possible.

Release date: April 20, 2021

Publisher: Hachette India

Print pages: 200

Sample

Outside the ICU

Thursday, 3 April 2014

Srini had his second attack. It seems strange to start a diary like this, sort of abasagunam,2 but I had to.

I heard Kamala tell Viswa, in whispers, that I made inappropriate jokes in the ambulance. What else was I to do? Srini was lying on the stretcher, and of course I didn’t want to prolong the awkwardness and dampen everyone’s spirits. It was a long ride, what with traffic and everything. Did they expect me to simply sniffle and/or cry and/or wail? The silence was too much, so I asked Kamala and her son a couple of riddles. Apparently, this is what considerate people receive as thanks – whispered gossip. For the record, they did not answer the riddles correctly.

The ICU is an entire storey to itself. The wait outside the ICU is a whole other story. It’s like Russian roulette. You really have no idea what is happening within those chambers. Suddenly, one morning, when you walk in to relieve your daughter from her duties, you notice one family member is no longer present. Your daughter knows nothing about what’s going on. You realize that they’re either home, or Home. You’re scared to ask anyone so you simply sit there, convincing yourself that they went back to their earthly home.

It’s the same story every day, pretty much: we are all waiting outside for the doctor to enter the hallowed space of the ICU, and then for her to exit it. When she does, we ply her with questions that she hates to answer. This seems to be the attenders’ schedule day after day. But during that wait, something else happens. Our relationships are peeled away, exposing us for who we are, and how. Here is where our relationships are weighed, and we are introduced to ourselves, in a manner of speaking. Don’t they say that ‘adversity does not build character; it reveals it’ or something? How many times you check your phone, how you speak with your mother when your father is battling for his life, whether you stay overnight and sleep in that narrow chair (and do so timidly) – all these tell the stories of your life. You also make a quiet note of who called and who didn’t, who came to the hospital and who didn’t.

You check each other’s wards’ ailments and are suddenly aware of the organs that constitute us. You marvel, like a child, at how complex the human body is, and how your body, really, is not you but just a conglomerate of well-oiled systems whose presence, like good editing, you only notice when something goes bad.

I am mostly scared in places like this. New context and new places. It’s like everything has changed or is constantly changing. See, a vacation is a change, but it’s good: it has familiar people; a death patient at home is also bearable – same place, even if the context changes.

This hospital thing is terrifying. I’m clutching Srini’s medical records so tight, my nails are tearing the folder. They have taken so many new tests, and I have also brought along his old test results. I constantly worry that I have left a crucial report back home – that one report that could mean the difference between life and…better life – as if these pieces of paper have left trails, like the breadcrumbs from a fairy tale, and even one lost breadcrumb could lead the doctors down the wrong path.

When we are allowed inside, the machines, the clean floors, the near-total sanitation is still bearable. What’s unbearable is seeing the person you’re there for – in a sense, they are not the same person outside the ICU. Like a coward, I hope that Srini is asleep so I can just take a peep and come back out.

I want his sarcastic comments, so that I can silence him. The silence without the attendant preamble is discomfiting. When I saw him lying there on the ICU bed yesterday, hooked up to all those tubes and machines, thinner than I had ever seen him, as if those tubes were actually slowly sucking life out of him, I desperately wished he wouldn’t wake up right then and smile through his teeth, masking his pain. He has a talent for that. The beep-beeps I can yet handle, somewhat.

Thank God Viswa is here. She is my pillar of strength. She drove down as soon as she heard and has been here, doing everything. Pari called and asked if she should come but what would be the point? There wasn’t enough work for two. I mean, for three. It has been Viswa all through – calling in favours, having friends contact doctors for second and third opinions, paying the money and holding me up. Sometimes, literally. She’s been my Krishna. I sometimes hope she never leaves. But mostly, common sense returns and she irritates me.

This is Srini’s second attack. Perhaps brought about by me.

You know how, when you resolve to do something, you are so diligent about it in the beginning? But in a few months (or days, in my case) things slip away, little at a time, almost imperceptibly, and you feel helpless about it? No matter how hard you try, like that frog in the well, you jump up only to slide back down? Imagine that over two years. That’s what happened with Srini.

After the first attack, the menu at home would have put rabbits to shame. Slowly, festivals intruded and in the absence of the children (Pari and Viswa, not the grandkids), it seemed like just one little diamond of Mysore pak would not make a difference, even if it were the best candidate for the title, ‘The Widowmaker’. One more spoon of ghee would be okay. For what was the purpose of life if not to enjoy it in its entirety? What did we have to live for, we told ourselves, not failing to notice how the level of the philosophy we expounded was directly proportional to the number of dietary restrictions imposed. Slowly, coconut jostled its way into beetroot curry and fried appalams muscled their way onto the plate.

It was just a regular early morning when it happened. I suppose I had just given Srini his coffee and he finished it, slurping his tongue as he usually did, indicating that he had finished and that I could take the tumbler–davara to the kitchen to rinse it. I was in the kitchen, cutting vegetables, when it happened. He called out for me, and clutched his heart.

In hindsight, Sorbitrate, his anti-cyanide, should have been in a locket on his neck. I once knew a man who actually kept it in a little watertight vial, suspended on his poonal. I laughed about it then, but now, it seems like genius. I got to his tablet bag, fished out the Sorbitrate and immediately placed it under his tongue. Then I breathed. I hoped it was just gas, like the last time we rushed to the hospital. I called an ambulance and it arrived not long after. By then, Srini had stopped clutching his heart and Kamala and her son had reached home and taken over some of the logistics. It was the first time I travelled in an ambulance; last time, I was parcelled off to Kamala’s house (‘Wait there, ma, till I call you,’ Viswa had said). An ambulance ride is not like in the movies; in ours, there was a lot of talking about everything other than Srini, I now see, mostly by me.

Viswa, of course, immediately drove down from Bangalore. I felt relieved as soon as she entered the white corridors of the hospital, as if I had passed on the contentious box in a game of passing the parcel.

Sekar was already there (for his brother), but Viswa was the better choice to hold and take care of the parcel situation.

When the doctors suggested a bypass surgery, Viswa asked for a day to decide and sent the reports to all her doctor friends. She spent the entire night on the internet as I made Bournvita for her; it was like she was studying for her board exams all over again.

Palm Bella Vista, Chennai

Monday, 14 April 2014

Today is the Tamil New Year.

The girls called, as they have every single year they’ve been away. There’s a list of days they call us on, a list that has remained constant for the past decade or so. The birthdays, anniversaries, New Year’s, Gods’ birthdays, I-Day, Deepavali, Pongal.

Ever notice how people wish you Puthandu Vaazhthukkal on 14 April and on 1 January, Happy New Year? As if the years lead parallel lives, like the audio tracks on those Magicbox DVDs I used to buy for Neel.

First up, at dawn, Pari called. The Angel.

Pari, Parineeta, whose dusky skin always was at dissonance with her name, causing eyebrows and inflections to rise. Even as a little girl her teachers would be puzzled, as if something did not quite add up and would ask her to repeat her parents’ names, to confirm that a Pankajam and a Srinivasan actually came together to create a Parineeta. How do you explain with a straight face that your husband was so in love with the Bengali novel, that he decided on a name for your child while you were still floundering with the idea of being a parent?

Anyway, Pari called and wished us both Happy Tamil New Year, and we could even hear her drag her children to the phone. ‘Come and talk to your paati and thatha and wish them. Right now!’ we heard on speakerphone. ‘We’re just about to leave for a get-together, Amma,’ she said, not explaining why the kids were awake, or where her husband, Siva, was. I can’t recall when I spoke with him last. Months, perhaps.

The kids, lovely young free spirits, Neha, just two, and Neel, about eight, I think. I’d better be honest about my feelings: I cannot comprehend most of what Neel says on the phone, what with the thick American accent and the time difference. It’s worse when he tries to talk like an Indian. Srini and I usually laugh nervously or repeat the last word as a question, if we don’t understand what he says (which is almost always).

Sample this:

‘Thatha, how’s the weather there?’

We say, ‘Weather there?’

‘Paati, how are you?’

‘You?’

When they visit India, at least we have visual cues. Never mind that Srini and I forever look like a pair of lemurs, gawking at his mouth. We could not, in good conscience, tell Pari that the phone was a terrible idea. We wished them both a happy new year.

Then came the call from Viswa, short for Viswapriya. She hated the full version of the name and insisted we not use it unless absolutely necessary. She was, in turns, Priya, Viswa, Vishy. She was supposed to have come home for New Year, but later said she had some work. I hope she has a boyfriend. Really. She is too picky for me to find a proper match for her.

She wants to move to Silicon Valley at some point, I think. It’s about six hours from Silicone Valley, where all the Hollywood stars live! I read that in a book once. I thought it was funny. I’ve even written it down in my ‘Lines for Thought’ book. It’s a collection of interesting lines and quotes from books.

Anyway, Silicon Valley is also where Pari lives. We’ve been there once, whe. . .