The Unbearable Sweetness of Being by Vibha Shetiya

I watched with confusion and a guilty sense of disgust – maybe this was the way things were done in India? My aunt had reached across to the cluster of letters strung together by a single piece of wire twirled around a nail on the wall, and gently dislodged one of them. They were from my father to his mother. I didn’t know what to think. After all, she went on to say, Your father is so good with language; just listen to this, just how beautifully he writes, before reading out aloud a lengthy passage. She was a good reader; gentle, perfect cadence with pauses in the right places. But I wanted to turn away on this intrusion of privacy, on this emotional voyeurism, but then thought, Wait, just last evening and the evening before that, and the many evenings before that she had spent the only free time she would get – from the large extended family who, hearing of her generous spirit, had congregated in her home in Bombay, that city of big dreams but of tiny square footage (blissfully unaware that they were now indebted to her for life) – on her rudrakshamala, deep in meditation, in union with god. So pious a woman! So pure a heart! Such a giving soul! Surely then there can’t be anything wrong here. Especially if it’s to say something nice about someone you cared for. And, after all, those letters were right there in the kitchen above the dining table, weren’t they? Not tucked away in some corner of a chest of drawers hidden from sunlight. 

I had been with my parents in Zambia when my father wrote those to his mother over a span of 11 years, from when I was a year old to almost thirteen now. This place was alien to me. Sure, we visited every three years or so and it would always be so much fun, my cousins and I without a care in the world, playing, laughing, getting into trouble. We were kids, our bodies amorphous, not even trying to break out of childhood. But now here I was, returned ‘for good.’ So many things had changed. I was now a tall, young girl, whose body was rebelling against the childhood that India – and my relatives – had known since my last visit at the age of 10. I had blossomed, I had a mind of my own, I was quirky, I was sensitive. I was my own little person. And I was in such an alien word, and here was this woman, whom I had barely noticed before and vice versa, being so nice to me, paying so much attention to me. And how wonderful that she wanted the whole world to know the language that revealed my father as a loving and doting son. Maybe this is how people expressed their admiration in India?

Over the next few days I increasingly became the recipient of her generosity and deep care. One particular day, I was trying out the new clothes that she and my uncle had insisted on buying me. I had picked them out at the store, and eagerly modeled them for the entire family. One after another was rejected on my behalf by my aunt who thought they were inappropriate for my “a little too nice body.” Oh, I thought, in India there are certain types of clothes you definitely don’t wear, especially if you have a supposedly nice body. So, my usual uniform of shorts and jeans were never to be unpacked, instead tucked away to be given to boy cousins. The two skirts my mum had bought me just before leaving Zambia, the ones I currently lived in were probably just as inappropriate since they were form-fitting especially around the rear area. How lucky for me that I had someone who truly, really cared for me. It was obvious my own mother didn’t. Maybe that’s how all mothers in India were? (Maybe even all great-aunts? Years later she would look out for my teenage niece too with her repeated refrains of, “Oh dear, she’s got a big bottom just like the rest of us…look, look. Oh, the poor thing.” Imagine. The rest of us hadn’t even noticed, but how lucky for us that my niece had her to count on. And how so generous of her to include herself among the fallen, a lady whose butt could have been flatter than Kansas.)

She was also a great help in making sure my feet were firmly planted on the ground. Whenever she would tell me I was beautiful, it was always followed by a, “but you’re not delicate.” Surely, she was saying that just to keep me humble, lest I got haughty because of my apparent good looks. Similarly, the first time she took me on one of her regular rounds to the temple, she initiated me into adapting to my forever-changed path. Your right hand moves quicker than your left one, she told me. Oh, so this is the way people don’t walk in India. Gosh, how fortunate I was that someone cared enough to tell me not just the ways things should be, but also how they shouldn’t. You shouldn’t refrain from reading someone else’s private thoughts. You shouldn’t wear clothes that will let people know you have breasts and a bottom. You shouldn’t draw attention to your right hand when you walk. I was just so grateful at how she had taken me under her wing, when she had two daughters of her own, mind you; I’d never seen her shower them with so much attention. She was a rare one, this woman was. Were all women in India such magnanimous souls?

That would be the tone for the next forever. Much later, I would come to think of those first few months as my poetic initiation into hell, the beginning of the end of my spirit, a requiem for my soul, sung oh, so sweetly, by my aunt.