Tales of South India

A Grandmother's Tale: The Final Installment

Continued from here:

The next few days were pure hell. The wife was kept under heavy sedation so that she did not spin completely out of control after being bombarded with so much of bad news. The baby died, after a mere five days of life. The husband spent all his free time in the hospital, gazing at his slumbering wife, dreading the day she would have to deal with the horrors of reality without the numbing haze of sedation.

A Grandmother's Tale: Part 3

Continued from here:

The two pregnancies progressed well.  The wife, as the wife of a senior official at a British company, had access to the best medical care. She became the patient of the city’s top obstetrician-gynecologist, the one all the foreign ladies went to see. His office, sparkling white and cheerful, super-efficiently air-conditioned, never crowded, was equipped with the latest gadgets and technology. Some people (usually his Indian patients) grumbled behind his back (to his face they were all simpering adoration) that he was arrogant and conceited, that he became impatient and irritable if too many questions were asked, but, they hastened to reassure whoever it was they were complaining to (and perhaps themselves as well) that he was the best-qualified doctor in all of India, probably the world even.

A Grandmother's Tale: Part 2

Continued from here:

Bewilderment and surprise washed over me again. Faintly in the background, I could hear the clatter of dishes as my parents and the maid cleaned up the mess from the party. I knew I should have offered to help, but I wanted to be alone and did not bother. Instead here I was, feeling choked and claustrophobic with the stench of urine and my grandmother’s stale breath enveloping me. I took a gulp of air through my mouth.

A Grandmother's Tale: Part 1

Here's another "short" story that I'm forced to break up into parts so that you don't all run away screaming. And this one is specially for Flowergirl, Shyam and Srivalli , who asked so nicely!

I remember vividly, my fifteenth birthday. All these years later, the events of that day still stand before me in sharp focus. The passage of time has dulled nothing. 

I had a birthday party – the last time I had one. It was my farewell to childhood and a carefree, uncomplicated way of looking at life. And the beginning of acute self-consciousness and self-awareness, of a mindfulness of my (probably imagined) flaws, my mother’s moodiness and frequent silences, my father’s eagerness to please, the creaking strains in the relationships between the members of my family.