I
As a kid, I believed that Mummy's long, slim fingers were intent on never letting anyone forget that she was a typist. They'd tap away as if the world was their keyboard. They'd tap on tabletops and kitchen counters, on the backs of cushions and on the arms of chairs. When she was in the bus, they'd tap on her knees if she was sitting, or on the horizontal steel rod she was holding on to while standing. When we were walking hand-in-hand, they'd tap on the back of my hand. When she was putting me to bed, they'd tap on the bedsheet, keeping pace with the song she was humming to send me to sleep. They'd wake me up in the morning by tapping on my forehead. When her hands were free, they'd tap on air. When one of her hands was full, the other's fingers would be tapping furiously as if to compensate. When both hands were full, a finger or two still found a way to tap on the surface of whatever she was carrying.
Because I was so used to the tapping, I'd notice when they stopped. One of those occasions was when she'd read Papa's letters to me. Papa was working in Dubai. Mummy told me he left Delhi when I was four in 1984. Every two weeks or so, she'd come home from work beaming. Fishing Papa's letter out of her handbag, she'd sit down to read it to me. As she read, her fingers gripped both sides of the letter as if it was so precious and fragile that the slightest twitch would cause it to tear. I have little memory of what was written in those letters. What I remember vividly is how Mummy's smile would fill her entire face when she read them out to me. She looked as if she was inhabiting some secret heaven in that moment. It was only when I started asking when Papa was coming back that the smile diminished. She looked away with a deep breath. "Soon," she said with a faraway look in her eyes.
Since I had little memory of Papa, I'd spend a lot of time gazing at his pictures. I guess that was my way of getting to know the man behind those letters. There were pictures of him up on the walls of our tiny, one-bedroom apartment. Many more in the photo albums that Mummy kept in her almirah. He was smiling in most of them, which made me imagine him as a jovial man. He had a bushy beard that hid a lot of his face. Each time I saw it, I was reminded of how a prickling sensation would run across my cheeks when he bent to kiss me. His thin, pointed nose was the same as mine. He seemed to like check shirts; he wore them in just about every picture. His turbans were flashy – deep blue, orange, bright red.