Tamarind Mem by Anita Rau Badami

couldn’t burrow into her fragrant warmth for long for she had to go somewhere.
    “I want to go with you, takemetakemetakeme,” I wailed as Ma peeled away, ready to sing out of the house.
    She spent hours chatting with her friends on the telephone, disappearing for a matinee show sometimes. When she returned, she acted out funny bits from the movie for Roopa and me, her long arms flying in the air, her eyes bright with laughter. Sometimes, on a Saturday, she might clap her hands and say, “Let’s go for a picnic today!” And then Ganesh Peon would scurry around preparing baskets of food, grumbling aloud about the Memsahib’s erratic moods. “She thinks I am a magician. Make
puri,
make
aloo-dutn
! And all in ten minutes if you please!”
    There were times when she did nothing at all. Her sewing piled up in great coloured heaps in the guest room, her knitting lay abandoned in its faded cloth bag. Even when strips of sunlight picked out dust patches under the furniture, and she knew right away that the maid Rani had not touched that place with her broom for days, Ma ignored it. And Rani swung her hips in her saucy skirts, tossed her head and breezed through the house, leaving dustballs and cobwebs where they were. Later, later, when Dadda came home and Ma went thin-lipped and mean, Rani would get a good scolding. Then my mother swallowed her smile and ordered Ganesh Peon to make hot
phulkas.
She spent hours in the spare room cutting up cloth to make dresses for Roopa and me, her face so serious that for a long time I was certain that I had two mothers. Ma was a two-headed pushmi-pullyu fromDr. Dolittle’s zoo, or the Ramleela drama woman with a good mask on her face and a bad mask on the back of her head, changing her from Seetha to Soorpanakhi in a single turn.
    Linda Ayah went gloomy when Ma sang. Her face crumpled into a frown like an irritated monkey and she muttered beneath her breath. She fought with Ganesh Peon, yelled at the
dhobhi
for putting so much starch in my frocks that the cloth scratched Baby-missy’s skin. Her thin nose quivered with displeasure. She became as huge as a cloud threatening to erupt into thunder, and finally even Ma couldn’t stand it any longer.
    “What?” she demanded, glaring at Linda. “What’s wrong with you?”
    “With me? I am as fine as this morning. Why should anything be wrong with me?” said Linda. “Am
I
doing anything I should not do? Nono.”
    “Then if everything is okay with you, stop giving me those looks,” snapped Ma, her fingers nervously braiding her hair into a plait that flickered like dark lightning down her back when she walked.
    When Dadda was at home, Ma wore all that hair in a knot at the nape of her neck, secured by curly hairpins. Perhaps he had told her that it was undignified for a memsahib to leave her hair flying about her face like a wild woman. Dadda did that sometimes, made odd comments that made Ma cry. If I found a pin lying on the floor, let loose from the sliding brilliance of my mother’s hair, I kept it under my pillow, for it was almost like having Ma next to me, patting me to sleep as she used to when I was much, much younger.

    It was now four months since Ma had taken off on that absurd trip of hers, wandering around India like a gypsy with only a bed-roll, a flask of water and a small bag. She sent us postcards after she had reached her destination, never letting us know where she was going next. She spent her journey telling stories to sweepers from Jhansi, fishwives from Sanghli, a minister from Guntoor who had just lost the elections.
    “The man had a forest of hair growing out of his ears and nose,” she remarked in one of her wretched cards. “And he didn’t believe a word of what I was telling him about my life. I think he suspected that I had escaped from the Ranchi asylum.”
    I wished that I could write and inform Ma that the minister was not alone in his suspicions. She was definitely crazy, an old woman like her who