I Didn’t Cry At My Mother's Death, I Laughed At My Father's Gullibility
The stories of husbands being insolent towards their wives fail to register any degeneration in my head. I scan these articles in the newspapers like I read a fiction novel, for me they paint a picture incredulous for my belief, let alone sympathizing with these women. Perhaps, the perceptibility of the human mind are guided by the situations they come through in their lives. The events I had witnessed, ever since I could go back in time and recall, oppose me to seep in the concept of men being imprudent to their women. Quite a strong statement this is, I know, more so, because I am a woman myself.
But I am that woman, who as a girl, has slept innumerable nights, sulking over the presence of that man in my mother’s bedroom in my father’s absence. My mother had introduced him to me as her distant cousin, my Mama. She deceived me into believing that relations between these families were sour and my father despised this Mama. With passing time, my mother grew ignorant to the fact that her 13 year old daughter could now figure out that no brother slips into his sister’s bed, while her husband was out on a business tour. I had outgrown the stories mom had weaved around this fictitious brother of hers, but I chose to keep my lips sealed to save my dad a heartache.
Now before you provide for his busy schedule as an excuse to my mother’s infidelity and judge my father as an ambitious workaholic, indifferent to his family’s emotional needs, let me clarify that an emotional need of any kind was an alien term for my mother. She was a woman motivated solely by money and other shallow luxuries of life. If her husband spent 17 days of a month out of the country, signing huge deals, it was only to bring to his beautiful (on the outside) wife all the extravagances he knew, she had an eye for - perfumes from Paris, dresses from London, and lipsticks from New York. My father was basically running errands to populate my mother’s closet, in the guise of business meetings.
At 18, I found myself incapable of shedding a single drop of tear for the untimely demise of that woman. But I felt miserable at dad’s bereavement. Seeing him crumble down in front of my mom’s picture every evening, a part of my mind sympathized with him, and the other laughed at his imbecility.
I debated for prolonged hours and finally settled in favor of transpiring the depravity in his gone wife’s character to him. I thought the shock of deception will mitigate the pain of loss. I told him, “She isn’t worth your tears, dad. She was a fucking whore. You are blessed that she died.”
“You don’t talk like that about your mother. Everyone has flaws, so did she.”
“Do you even know what she did behind… ”
“I know, I have always known. If you have known it, what makes you believe, I being a husband won’t sense it. I chose to remain blind. I hoped someday she will admit, repent, and reason her infidelity. I was waiting for it, but she left too soon, without any explanation or apology.”
For an instant, I felt, I was hallucinating. Sadly, I wasn’t. My dad was always in complete cognizance of my mother’s baseness. But his mind was clogged by the outrageous amount of love he had in his heart for her. My mother, as I now make of her, was a wrenched soul who couldn’t recognize or reciprocate this love. Dad continues to live like another cursed soul, chosen to suffer by the evil forces of destiny. He couldn’t get anything out of the wife he loved so intensely. His wife denied him everything he was entitled to - happiness, love, and commitment. Worst of all, she didn’t even leave him an apology, that one thing he so rightfully deserved.
….As told to Avantika Debnath
Pic source - https://www.yahoo.com/travel/tagged/cruise/
