Sister to call my own

She was not what I was expecting. From our phone conversations, I imagined an older woman, plump, with tired, black circles under her eyes. But P, she was young, slender. She wore an orange kurta over blue jeans. She didn’t look the part of mother to two teenagers. A boy stood a few steps back of her, immersed in the shadows of the alley, looking at us curiously. His eyes were a striking brown-green, cat eyes they call it. That must be the son, I thought. He edged away as he caught my eyes on him. She led us deeper into the alley. This was the first time I was moving into a place without actually seeing it beforehand. With bated breath, we lugged my luggage down a small slope to their home.

It was a modest one, one storey. There was a small parlour, two bedrooms (one of them had a bathroom attached), a dining room and a kitchen. There was a bathroom in the back, outside, but it didn’t work. If I chose the room with the bathroom, I wouldn’t be able to lock the door in the night since it was a common one. So I chose the other room. There’s one other girl, she told us. I didn’t mind honestly. After rooming with an average of four to five roommates for the past five years, one girl wasn’t going to be a problem. Or so I thought.

She turned out to be a huge problem though, and not in the conventional way. She didn’t have any weird, annoying habits. She didn’t go through my things. She didn’t mess up the room. Yet after just one night, I became emotionally invested her. I called her my sister. And not in the superficial way we call our seniors, store keepers or people you just meet. I actually meant it when I called her chechi.

“My father died a few weeks ago.” She told me quietly once we were alone.

I didn’t know what to say. My mouth was dry. Back home, I’d offer the common condolence, “I’m sorry.” 

Here, I couldn’t say that. It felt wrong.

I guess I didn’t need to say anything because she continued. She told me how her mother died from cancer three months before her father’s passing. How she became an orphan in less than a year. How she was engaged but her wedding kept getting delayed because of the disease and subsequent deaths. She explained how she racked up a hefty debt for cancer treatments. How this was the first time she was staying away from home. It was heart breaking to listen...

I learned a lot that night. I finally understood my mom’s feelings. Why she kept bringing up marriage lately. Her pestering was because she was afraid. She was afraid if something unexpected like this happened, I, an only child, wouldn’t have anybody to call my own. It was a scary thought.

Later on, chechi would tell me, “It’s as if someone sent you to me that night.”

Apparently, her sister had stayed with her for two weeks to ease her into this home-away-from-home. However, her sister had to go back home the previous night. As chechi wondered what she would do all by herself in this lonely room, I came.

And we became close, quickly. She introduced me to Thiruvanthapuram. I, in turn, listened to all her amazing memories of her childhood, her parents, her siblings... I understood it was her release, but she was a brilliant story teller. I could get lost in her stories.

Our sudden closeness seemed to irritate our landlady for some reason. And she took it out on chechi.

P started saying insensitive things like “death is natural” and how we should come to terms with it. I saw how it was affecting chechi. When chechi walked away distraught, P scoffed, “she needs to accept this.”

I was like, “death is natural, but when you have two parents die recently, you don’t want to consider the mechanics of it, you just want to mourn.”

P didn’t appreciate my support of chechi. I feel as if that only increased the animosity.

P continued to do and say things that would hurt chechi. I was struggling to understand why though. P’s situation couldn’t be called similar, but it was traumatic just the same: an abusive husband who split when he saw a younger woman. You would think she would be more sympathetic to chechi’s suffering... When I discussed this with my friend J, she told me about this article she read in Vanitha, a Malayalam lifestyle magazine. It was entitled “Why are Women so Cruel?” Although I couldn’t read it, she gave me the gist.

With P’s cruelty and a neighbour who echoed Shobana from Manichithrathazhu, it got to a point where chechi couldn’t take it anymore. She left.

P was embarrassed. She thought chechi may have talked bad about her to me. So she talked bad about chechi. She didn’t realize that she was digging her own hole. Once she said, “Hum. She didn’t like my food. If she liked her mom’s food so much, she should’ve gone with her.” I realized I couldn’t stay in this environment anymore.  I also left, following chechi to another accommodation.

It’s crazy how bonds form, isn’t it? Sometimes it takes years, and sometimes it just takes a few sentences. I came to this city not knowing anybody save a few internet friends. And now, I have an older sister to call my own.