Dinner Time

(A Maithili Story by Raj Mohan Jha)

Translation- Rajesh K. Jha

(Raj Mohan Jha (b. 1934) was a renowned Maithili story writer and critic who received several literary awards including Sahiyta Academy award in 1996. He passed away in 2016.)

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Sitting in my living room, I was preparing notes for tomorrow’s class. Mamta was checking answer-sheets in the drawing room. Just then I heard Mamta calling , ‘Is the food ready Ramu? If it is done, prepare the table quickly.’

I had planned to finish the note before I got up for the dinner. I shouted loudly, ‘ let me first complete the note. What’s the hurry?  I have just checked my watch. It is only half past eight.’

‘So, you find half past eight too early? I have to reach college at eight in the morning.’

‘I too have to reach college by nine’, I shouted back at Mamta.

‘Sure, why should you bother? You will wake up comfortably at eight but I have to complete everything after getting up in the morning. You can complete your note after the dinner’.

I realised she would not relent. I put the open book upside down on the pillow and came out of the room. Mamta was still checking the answer-sheets.

‘Oh, great. You forced me to stop but your own business stuff is wide open’, I said in a complaining voice to Mamta.

‘Will be right there before Ramu brings the plate’, said Mamta without lifting her head from the answer-sheet she was checking.

‘I have asked you so many times not to start dinner before nine. No respectable person takes dinner before nine in the evening’.

‘It would be nine by the time the dinner is finished’, Mamta said while writing the final marks on the flap of the examination paper.

‘Not finish dinner by nine, but start it by nine’, I told Mamta snatching the answer-sheet from her.

‘It is all the same.’, Mamta straightened up to rise. ‘ I don’t sleep till eight in the morning. Right in the morning….’

‘Tell me something’, I cut off Mamta in the middle of her sentence and asked her with some seriousness, ‘what all are you supposed to be doing after getting up in the morning when Ramu does everything?’

‘Oh, tell me who wakes up Ramu every morning’, Mamta reacted sharply. ‘If I don’t wake him up, he will never leave the bed before nine in the morning. If he woke up in one try, I would have had no problem. He is in the habit of going off to sleep even after being woken up by me. I must make ten attempts before he finally opens his eyes and leaves bed. So many days, I had to pour water on him to wake him up. He is like that only’.

It seemed a little inhuman to me. I told her that she was quite cruel. Whoever named her committed a mistake. She was just the opposite of her name which meant empathy and affection. ‘Tell me truly,  who chose the name for you?’, I asked Mamta.

‘Please leave this topic. I don’t remember who named me’, Mamta replied while gathering the answer-sheets before her. By this time, Ramu had already kept two glasses on water on the table. It indicated that the dinner was ready to be served now. I will have to eat now.

‘Don’t you think, I mean, don’t you feel that eating has just become a mechanical ritual for us, like any other ‘work’ we do? We should not take our food as if we are doing some work’.

‘Great. Eating is also a work. Isn’t it? It is indeed a work.’

‘No, I don’t mean that. I am not talking about the act of eating which is surely a ‘verb’ in the sense of doing but it should not feel like a ‘task’ which has to be completed somehow.’ I tried to convince her.

‘Keep all that philosophy to yourself. If I started acting on your advice, then I am done with. I will be able to do nothing in that case.’ Mamta retorted.

Ramu had kept the plates by now. I made a quick glance of the plate spread on the table. Pulling the  small bowl towards me I asked Mamta, ‘ I think he had made the same preparation of fried potato-cucumber yesterday too? Isn’t it?’

Mamta dipped a morsel of Chapati into lentil soup. ‘What else can one prepare? These days you get only these few varieties of vegetable in the market- brinjal, bitter gourd, cucumber and ladies-finger. I am also really tired of eating cucumber every day’.

‘Not only this. I feel that it would really not be any different even if suppose, bitter gourd is cooked in place of cucumber for the vegetable. The taste would be the same. Actually, he prepares everything in the same style, by the same process. Whether it is cucumber or the bitter gourd, the taste remains the same, almost. And, the way we eat also does not have any place for taste. Isn’t it?’

Mamta took a sip of water and said, ‘Come on, poor chap, whatever he can do, he does. I don’t have time even to give him any guidance for preparation.’

I tried to remember the last time Mamta had cooked for us. I could not remember. I thought I should ask Mamta about it but I held back for the fear that she may take it otherwise.

‘What is keeping you so engrossed now?’, Mamta asked me, putting a morsel of food in her mouth.

‘No..nothing…I was just thinking that all this has to be finished somehow’, I spoke in a dejected tone pointing to the plate and bowl kept before me.

‘Oh, please…finish your dinner and give the poor fellow a little time’. Mamta appeared irritated seeing me eat disinterestedly.

Ramu had by then brought a bowl of milk. Mamta ordered him to get a piece of fire-fried papad for us.

‘Can we not do like ……..may be one day we can….’

‘What? What do you want us to do?’ Mamta interjected sharply and started looking at me.

‘ Actually, I had a long standing desire that you should not force me to eat. Let me eat at a time when I wish to.. that is… when I feel really hungry…may be at one in the night or at two or whenever I feel like eating.’ I put up this proposal before her.

‘And, Ramu will keep waiting for you?’, Mamta looked at me with a questioning eye.

‘What if he goes to sleep…’, I tried to ask back without saying so much than conveying through my eyes.

‘No, I won’t keep awake till then. He will keep aside your plate which you can eat whenever your sweet desire tells you to do.’ Mamta flatly refused to buy into my request.

The thought of eating alone dampened my spirit. Ramu had brought the Papad by now and listening to our conversation. Mamta asked him to go and finish his dinner quickly. ‘Go and sleep, you have to get up in the morning’, Mamta ordered Ramu.

I started munching on papad. The slow grinding sound of pappad under my teeth took me to an old scene at my village…Grandpa is having food and my grandma is sitting before him. She is slowly fanning him with a hand-fan. God knows what all they talked during this time as they seemed to exchange with each other everything under the sky. Grandpa, Baba used to relish his food. The Aanwala chutney was a must for him both during lunch and dinner. When Baba would finish eating, grandma would get up putting her hand on the ground and raising herself slowly. ‘Just wait for a while before I get you some curd’, she would tell Baba. This image had remained deeply imprinted like a film on my mind since early childhood. I still remember it vividly as if it happened before my  eyes just yesterday. Perhaps, this memory of Baba eating his food had imparted a special tasty attraction to it. Those days people loved their food. Everyday in the evening, grandma would ask Baba- ‘what vegetable tonight?’ Baba would not only tell her the name of his preferred vegetable but also the process through which it is to be prepared like- cook brinjal mashed in  spinach or else cucumber fried with carrot.

I had an urge to share this memory with Mamta. But then I thought she may not take in the right spirit and start talking about male dominance, patriarchal values and other issues relating to women’s liberation etc. To avoid such a situation, I tried to change the topic. I asked her , ‘do  you remember your grandpa?’

Mamta was sipping milk from the bowl. For a brief period of time, she started looking into my eyes as if trying to find the hidden purpose of my questioning.

‘Yes, I remember’, she said. ‘ But how do you remember my grandpa now?’

‘No, I was thinking about my own grandpa. You did not see him but do you recollect my grandma?’ I asked Mamta.

‘Of course I remember her. But why do you start thinking about these useless things while your plate is still to be finished?’

I was aghast. I did not like Mamta labelling my conversation as ‘useless’ in this context. I took a gulp of water and put the milk bowl in the plate.

There was no point discussing this with Mamta. She had finished her milk and was waiting for me to finish. I asked her to carry on but she kept waiting for me. She said I would delay finishing my meal further if she left me.

After a while she again requested me with slight tone of irritation in her voice, ‘ please let the poor Ramu have some time for other works. If you finish quickly, he will go and finish the other pending works too’.

I moved closer from Baba’s time to the days of my father. He did not issue any royal dictate to mother what to cook for dinner but would enquire her about what she was going to cook for vegetable in the night. But the decision about the food was in the hands of my mother. Father had generally delegated this responsibility to my mother or perhaps mother had grabbed this right on her own from him. Indeed, this much progress in a generation was to be expected after all! I thought, whoever may have the right to decide about it, but food was certainly an attractive and tasty proposition in those days. I was a little amused to think that in our age the decision about food had passed from the hands of wife or husband to the servant.

I saw that Mamta was still waiting for me to finish my meal. Perhaps Mamta was trying to fathom the thoughts that hovered in my mind.

I took the milk bowl and finished it off in one gulp.

                                                                                                                                 

(Translation from the book- उदाहरण)