This incident goes back to when I was in middle school and it made an everlasting impression on me. I was too young, naïve, self-centered and I guess, playing a game of cricket after school hours was my only priority and Sundays only meant looking forward to watching TV and more TV.
It was the mid 80’s and in those days words like “economy booming” or “liberalization” were unheard of. We were all considered middle class and the only places that I knew where people were working were banks, life insurance companies or in neighborhood schools and colleges. People working in hospitals as doctors were the rich ones and then you avoided socializing with the law enforcement kind. You rarely knew anybody working in the movie industry. The closest you could get to being associated with a celebrity is when some distant relative of yours claims he lives only a few blocks from a newscaster. Nobody had a credit card and it was perfectly ok to borrow milk and yogurt from your neighbor next door.
My Dad, who is now retired used to work in a local bank and was a well-known, well-liked and well –respected person in his social circle. Some of them hated him too…they hated him for his guts, his set of old fashioned moral values and his upright honest behavior. Doing favors was something that did not come naturally to him. Sometimes, in fact most of the times, my Mom bore the brunt for his steadfastness. As if running the household on a tight budget was not enough, mending things with friends and relatives was her perks for being his wife. In that era, it was quite common for government employees to not get paid for almost two to three months. The bank would owe them their pay for few pay periods and then they would clear of their arrears in during one of those two-three month cycles. It was an accepted norm of life and my dad or his colleagues never complained about it. Theirs was a generation that probably faced any adversity with grace and accepting fate was just another part of life. They were no experts in labor laws and they would have probably scoffed at the thoughts of some legal approach. Things worked just fine, you in-turn owed money to the local grocer, the street vegetable vendor and as kids we would get “reminders” from the school about missing the school fee payment. If you missed a month’s school fee payment you would just pay it off in the next month and that not so vicious cycle of credit continued and life was just fine.
During one of those times, it was probably in the month of august (or one of those monsoon months) that our school announced a tour. It was not a weekend school picnic but a real excursion where the whole school party would drive off two hundred miles away upstate north and see some of those places that were only seen in geography or history textbooks. In all fairness to the school head-master, the announcement was made quite ahead of time and we were encouraged to bring up the subject with our parents during our dinner table conversations. We knew how it worked. We exactly knew how it worked. It never worked. Now asking for a buck or two for a cricket ball was one thing but putting in a request for a thousand bucks for a school excursion was a totally different thing. Besides neither me nor my sister were doing really good on grades either at that point of time. Though I was always a good student, unfortunately it was my “off-season” for grades and if only I had known earlier maybe I would have spent more time doing my homework than playing cricket. I had no bargaining chips and mine was a lost case before it even began. I spoke to my sister about it and she who probably thought that if I, who had the double advantage of being the favorite child and a male, was looking hopeless she dare not even dream about it. We stopped thinking about it and when our friends at school used to talk about it we pretended not to be interested in. Yes, we were not considering going to the school trip because we were really not interested. The school staff and students had by then started planning meetings every alternate evening and the tour was the most talked about event then. Then they were also talking about all the precautions to be taken and things to do. While some were bragging about being the prefect leader or being a volunteer for a specific task, some were bragging about how much spending money there rich dads were allowing them to. For that whole couple of weeks leading up to the actual day the tour bus would start I was feeling like I was living in a different town, an alien unwanted world.
It was just any other day and I was half way through eating my dinner, I wasn’t really excited about the taste of the curry on my platter or wasn’t exactly looking forward to the TV-show that we could watch after completing our homework, my Dad who was sitting at the other end of the table, whom I was trying hard not to look at, very abruptly propped a question “When are you guys going to that school trip?”. Before I could even believe my ears and while I was still trying to swallow my heart, he commandeered “Anyways, talk to your mom about it”. That was one order I would never disobey in my life. I couldn’t contain my excitement and the only reason that kept me sober was the fear that my dad would change his decision if he saw an undisciplined kid at the dinner table, no matter what the reason was. I was not going to screw this up because of my poor behavior. I did not even bother to think how he came to know about it.
I had to wait until next day before I could talk. You don’t walk behind your mom immediately into the kitchen and risk being overheard. I couldn’t wait for the school to be over and it was one of those few times when I had no interest in going to the play ground. I bicycled myself straight to home, parked my maroon cycle in the shade of the stairs and walked straight inside. After throwing away my school uniform, shoes ,bag and lunch box , I ran straight into my Mom’s arms , couldn’t wait to show all my love and affection for her and more importantly before she could say the final “yes”. All I needed was for her to say “Yes, you could go on the school excursion trip” and then I would hug her again or maybe I would get over dramatic and actually say those magical words “Mom, I love you”.
My mom who was “My MOM” knew exactly why I was home early that day and not at the playground. She knew why I loved her and why I loved her more that day than any other day. She was walking around all the house busy doing chores and I was busy chasing her. There was no opportune moment, at-least I couldn’t steal one and very abruptly asked her “So Mom, when can we tell our school teacher that we are coming to the trip?”. Not getting a response I thought she did not hear me and I repeated the question again, this time while pulling the end of her sari to make sure she got my attention. She said with no ambiguity “We will see”. This was the kind of answer I was not looking forward to. It needs a highly specialized skill set that only my mom has, to say a completely ambiguous statement in a total unambiguous way. “We will see...” It was more of a puzzle than an actual answer to me. Since my dad had already approved, my mom was only supposed to nod her head and give us the money, at-least that’s what I thought. What exactly is “We will see…” Is that a yes? Didn’t sound like one. If that was a yes, why wasn’t I feeling happy? If that was a no, what could be the reason? Besides, anger was brewing inside me thinking “What right she has to say No, when Dad already made his decision” though, I dare not question this out loud. This was a puzzle that was beyond the ability of my fledgling brain to crack. I needed help. I had to talk to someone and then at that very instant I remembered “I have a sister”. Where was she?? I have to recruit her and seek her help. She probably knows something that I don’t know. Besides, she talks to my mom more than I do.
After my sister came home that evening, me her most doted brother, walked up to her while she was doing her homework and asked why she was not interested in going to the school trip, at-least that was what I thought about her interest levels or lack of it. She gave a big smile. That’s when I knew she had all the answers. She paused for me to say something. Maybe I was supposed to beg her for answers. She enjoyed teasing me, but more so seeing my anxious face turn sorrow. She said it, in two words, the, same two words mom must have told her—“Not now”. “Not now??, I repeated to myself at-least a dozen times trying to understand what it meant and totally oblivious to the fact that she was enjoying playing mom to me. She later continued that one of our aunts was visiting us that month and also grandma was going to come and stay with us. I was least interested in the guest repertoire of the week and did not understand what it has anything to do with me not going on a fun trip. In fact, the only way I looked at it was that Big Aunt and Granny were only coming to ruin my trip.
I was furious at pretty much everybody and everything. My anger at family, friends and relatives lasted for almost a whole monsoon. My friends who came back from the school trip, with all their adventurous stories and with all the details of the fun they had, wasn’t helping in anyway. Even after six months, we friends could be in the middle of a cricket game and taking a break when someone would mention “Remember, that school trip…”. I was never going to be part of any those memories or conversations, forever.
It took me at-least a couple of years after I grew-up to realize what exactly happened and that’s when I slowly solved the puzzle. Because of the then government, most of the employees were not getting paid regularly and it was one of those times when my mom was waiting on my Dad’s situation on the job front to improve and that my aunt was visiting us only to have an eye-surgery done to restore her eye-sight( huh…I was too young to notice that one of her eyes was wrapped in a rag-tag when she arrived) and there were no “Big hospitals” in her village and when my Grandma had to stay with us it also had something to do with her doctor checkups and pharmacy bills.
In spite of all that happening then, my Dad did not hesitate to send us for that school trip, my wicked sister connived and pretended that she was not interested because she was completely ok with the thought of just one of us, her brother, going on that trip and it was my mom who had to sometimes, make those unpopular decisions.
It slowly dawned on me that those words which I would never forget for the rest of my life “We will see “ and “Not now” only meant love and sacrifice.
