Amma and the Cold Wave
‘Any ideas on what to look for when I order a room heater?’ asked the son.
‘I thought you had radiators in your flat?’
‘Not for me,’ he replied, ‘for Amma and Appa.’
‘For Amma and Appa?’ I asked in amazement. ‘I ordered them two heaters in November!’
‘So why is Amma complaining of the cold?’ Typical of the son. He is posed a problem. Ergo, he turns it into a puzzle for me. Side train of thought: Why does Amma communicate more to the son? Am I a bad daughter? Is this what the son is internalising? Is he being overburdened with all this? Does that make me a bad mother? Oh, I don’t like where this is going!
Return to conversation at hand. The ‘Why?’ continues to hang in the air. Then we both sigh collectively, with the husband lending full-lung support. ‘Amma!’
For Amma it is. True Delhi is in the midst of a bitter cold wave. True also that Amma is like a child. So the call the next day is predictable.
‘It’s so cold, beta, I can’t feel the teeth in my mouth.’ The video call shows Amma in scarf, hat, sweater, fleece jacket, faux fur booties…. If I didn’t know the tip of Amma’s nose so well, I’d have cried ‘Wrong number’ and called off.
‘Have you taken out the fleece blanket?’
‘That is too thin.’
‘Ma, you have to spread it over your bedsheet.’
‘So we sleep over it?’
‘Just give it to Appa. He knows what to do with it.’
‘Appa’s always sleeping.’ Time to interject. Start her on the topic of Appa’s dastardly crimes and we could be continuing into tomorrow. I don’t think WhatsApp would approve.
‘Why are you not using the heater?’
‘Who said I am not using? I use it when I watch TV.’
‘Watch TV in your bedroom. It’s a smaller room. Both of you sit there and put on the heater there. Keep the door closed.’
‘But the heater is not plugged in there and I can’t reach the power point.’
‘Ask the Jeeves to plug it in.’
‘But today’s Sunday.’
‘Yes, Ma, but tomorrow is Monday, ask him then.’
There was a pause in which Amma debated with herself the matter of raising with me what all this heater use would do to the electricity bill. After having graced the earth for eighty-one years, Amma still does not believe herself entitled to a winter’s worth of room heater. Her alter ego obviously advised her against the move for she moved in with a lateral argument, ‘Room heaters are very drying to the skin. I start itching.’
My turn to facepalm. When the husband first rolled out this itchy brainwave, the son and I laughed it out of court. But over the years, I’ve become brainwashed. The son is holding out. Amma slipped into willing complicity. It came from the Son-in-Law after all. And there it was now, come back to bite.
An aside here. Amma has always had an itchy back. The only reasons she has remained married to Appa are generational holdbacks and his immense skills as a back scratcher. So, the heater causing her itch was asking my imagination to stretch like a rubber band. I could already hear the snap.
The husband cut in. ‘Amma, use the heater!’
‘Okay, beta.’ The plaintive note persisted. Amma felt put upon.
I sighed as I called off. Despite the SIL intervention, this conversation was propped for repeat mode for the next few weeks. Till the winter was over. And summer began. And we moved to the AC conversation.
