Lately, I have been feeling restless. My hands move too much but don’t get a lot done. My body buzzes with the fluttering of a hundred dragonfly wings . The incessant buzzing creates a live-wired thrum in my chest, in my stomach, and all over my hands. To stop the buzzing, I try to remember what I did all these years to keep myself busy. I sit in the verandah with a sieve full of rice. I look out into the quadrangle of our chaali and see Manu’s mother on the 1^st floor with her sieve too. We have sat here through the swelling of my belly thrice and still continue to do so because the rice persists to have little stones that if not paid attention to, crunch with a loud sharpness through a morsel of dal rice. Earlier we would sit till the sun burned a metallic smell into our skin and clothes. We would exchange recipes, ask after each other’s families and collectively keep an eye on the papads drying in our shared compound. But now, my back hurts after a few rounds. I get up with a humph and yell ‘Chalo Bhabhi’ to let her know that I am done for the day, she nods and waves as she throws a small stone out of the rice in my direction to acknowledge it. 

I go back inside and lift the cover from my sewing machine. It’s rhythmic whirring used to scare Narayan as a baby. When he grew older, he would pedal and try to make the whirring sound with his mouth. His spittle would come flying at my face with the childlike flapping of his lips. I’m still amused by how happy this illusion of participating in the adult world made him. I think about all the frilly frocks I made for Renuka and Mamata. Sometimes, I find myself wishing to have had just a little more so the girls wouldn’t have to share frocks between them. But I tried making up for it by making something that was always close to what was being sold in shops. 

Now, they come to me for alterations and saree blouse-fittings. No more frills and puffy sleeves. Now, I wrap tape around their busts and loop it around their arms to see how I can fit their breasts in princess-cut cups that are flattering yet tasteful. I try to think of a shirt, a pant or a frock I could make for any of the neighbours’ kids. I don’t have any cloth but I long to hear the sound of the scissor devouring the cloth. Something that would drown out the buzzing. 

In the cupboard, I pick up a bed sheet that is the closest to me and farthest from the compartment that has the file. The buzzing intensifies as I see the edges of the file. I remember focusing on its crisp, rounded edges to keep myself from falling off the chair. The doctor’s freckled hand had drawn a breast on a paper in a sure, swift motion. I was embarrassed about another man talking to my husband about my breast. His calm, baritone voice wasn’t easy to ignore. But I was distracted by how my breast did not look like my breast. It looked like a patch of tear-drop shaped concrete on which a jamun had exploded. Splat! This splattering would kill me in the years to come. How long had the jamun been falling for, no one knew. But it had fallen and exploded. At first, it seeped through my breasts into my blouse and made its lumpy presence felt soon after.  The smell of iodine, metal and the doctor’s mild cologne fill my nose and I shake my head to get myself out of there. I manage to get out of the doctor’s cabin but the dragonflies drag me back to the hospital corridor.   

My husband and I hadn’t talked during or after our time in the doctor’s office. All I remember is holding on to the crook of his arm as we made our way out of the maze of whitewashed walls and worried faces of patients and their relatives. I didn’t see any of them, I only registered their presence. What was the point of looking at them then? In a few months that’s all I would see. Instead, I chose to focus on the grey hair at the nape of my husband’s neck. I would have looked at a fly rubbing its feet together, if it meant not looking at the pink file.  

I cut up the bedsheet this way and that, wishing they were pages from that file. I wished I could shred them into pieces and give them to Narayan so he would fold them into boats. I wished it would rain rivers so he would go and sail the disease away over streams of muddy rainwater. As my brain wandered through muddy streams, the scissor devoured the bedsheet in decisive snips. When I am done, I get up to see that I have cloth pieces for five new cushion covers for our living room set and a cover for our transistor. If I patch a few pieces together, I’ll have a matching cover for our television set too. 

The children won’t be home for another four hours, and their father, for another six. I can’t tell if he has been more of a husband to me or more of a father to our children. I don’t know if he will still remain my husband when I am gone. 

Every day, I try to stretch the hours of the day till everyone walks in through the front door in the evening. My youngest, Narayan, arrives first and flicks his footwear at the doorstep, like he’s shaking ants off his foot. My oldest, Renuka, leaves her pair of sandals on the left of the door. My middle one, Mamata, leaves her smaller, more fashionable pair on top of Renuka’s. My husband leaves his shoes, one next to the other,  right in the centre. Anyone who needs to go out or come in, takes a giant leap over them, very mindful of not disturbing their place. Then, they call out to me. I know it’s not just the glass of water I bring that they call out to. I know they also call out to me.  They find comfort in seeing my face, in knowing that no matter what goes on in the world outside, I will bring a glass of water for them when they’re home. And smile at them as our eyes meet each other and talk in a morse code of blinks. What they don’t know is that I circle them like a shepherd dog gathers stray sheep. That I would be chasing my tail if they didn’t lose their way. 

But what happens when the shepherd dog loses its way?

After they wash the day off of them, we sit around the teapoy in our hall with cups of tea. The children take turns reading news pieces aloud from the evening newspaper. This is my favourite part of the day, hearing my children read, write and talk in English. These strange sounding words that I’m slowly getting familiar with feel like the lick of a bonfire’s warmth on a cold night.

My husband has begun coming home 15 minutes earlier every day. He helps me with the evening tea, smiles and asks me how I feel. I want to slap the kind sadness out of his eyes. I can see my knuckles turning white around the edges of the plate with the biscuits. I slam it on the platform and hiss at him “How do you think I feel?” and walk out of there. I want him to yell at me and call me a bitch who deserves whatever’s happening to me. He just looks down and continues to stir sugar into the cups of tea.

At night, we turn our backs to each other and sleep. Those dragonflies really labour under my skin as the ceiling fan whirs noisily over our bed. I try not to stir, afraid of waking him up. But neither of us are sleeping. He stretches his hand and feels for my arm, squeezing it softly when he finds it. When he does hold me, I feel his chest quaking and hear him sniffling as he says sorry and wishes that he could do something. Something more, anything more. I bury my head deeper into his shoulder and say nothing. We stay in silence, saying nothing for a while. 

The doctor said an uncontrollable mass of cells was growing in my left breast, because of which, it had to be removed. And what of the uncontrollable mass of cells that grows between my husband, my children and I? 

We decided not to tell our children. At least, till it was absolutely necessary for them to know or till they knew on their own. Whatever came first. I don’t want my children to remember me as their sick mother. I want them to remember me as their mother who stitched their clothes, plaited their hair, scolded them, taught them to knead dough, made a huge jar full of pickles every year and laughed her big-toothed laugh at their father’s jokes.

And my Raghavarao, I just want him to remember me. 

A few weeks have passed since our visit to the Doctor’s office. I am still not sure if I should write a letter to my sister. Maybe I should tell her when she visits next. I’d like to see her stop me from wolfing down an entire box of kaajaas then. And if she tries to, I’ll look at her with the saddest face I can conjure without laughing and say “Don’t you want your dying sister to remember the sweetness of life?” 

The air is heavy with steam and the scent of sandal soap. I can feel my hair dripping slippery droplets down my back. As I soap myself, I pause around my chest and feel the weight of my slightly sagging breasts. They feel full and heavy with memories. I gather them both in my hands and squeeze them together. My nipples harden a bit from this and I relish it even more. Dark clouds gather on the roof of the bathroom as my hand goes to the breast and I press it into my body, willing it to disappear when I tell it to, not when it has to. The dragonflies thrum to the pounding of my heart.

 As I put on my blouse, I imagine what a sponge would feel like on one side of my chest. Would people be able to tell? Would my husband want to squeeze and suckle pleasure only from one breast? Would I enjoy it as much as I do now? Would a sponge fill the space in my blouse like my flesh does? Will it fall out if I bend or when I sleep on my side? All these questions fill my head as several dragonflies buzz in my throat. I open my mouth hoping they will leave but they only go back lower into my stomach, all the way down to my feet. I feel like a wire that’s come loose from the electric poles, I sizzle dangerously. 

I can neither sit nor stand still. How many cushions and pillows can I straighten today? I fill my sieve with rice but drop it in the living room before I’m out on the verandah. I sit there in the disfigured rangoli of the rice grains; not wanting to get up or clean. My vision blurs and I can see all the rice grains slowly turn into small stones. The lyrics of my favourite song come to me then, Thokar na lagana, hum khud hain girti deewaron ki tarah. It makes me think of the hero of that film, my favourite – Dharmendra. I blush a little, embarrassed as I see him stand in the corner of my living room. Aware of his eyes on my back, I sweep the rice grains in long, luxurious sweeps into the dust pan. Seeing the rice pile onto the dust pan is making the dragonflies slow and drowsy. I turn around and see that he is gone.  

I take one quick look in the mirror before I step out and centre the bindi on my forehead. I wave out to Manu’s mother who’s in the verandah cleaning rice. She looks in my direction and yells “Bhabhi kidhar?” I yell back “Kuch zaroori kaam aagaya hai…” I have some important work. I bunch up the pleats of my saree in my hand and walk out of the compound in hasty steps. As the tonga stops in front of the theatre, I see Dharmendra’s pensive face on a poster outside. In the darkness, I look around to see if there’s someone I know. There are just a few dark, unrecognizable faces glistening, illuminated by the glare of the screen. I hear the reel clicking into place and revolving in the projection room. The edge of my pallu across my shoulder feels snug, like his embrace. The dragonflies seem drowsy, their buzzing is melting away into soft, butter-y flutters in my stomach. I see his face, and his beautiful smile. I am lost in the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. My hand goes to my chest. I can feel my heart beat frantically, even as the uncontrollable mass of cells continues to grow somewhere above it.