Michael Corleone

  

Like any other day, she got up at 3 am. Worked without a break. In the kitchen. Around their land. Her three elder brothers and their families had arrived the previous night. She cooked for them. Her sisters-in-law offered to help knowing that she would shake her head. At 11 am, she walked to and back from the fish market three miles away on the other side of the mountain.

After lunch, her eldest brother, the IAS officer, looked at the others. They nodded.

“Is she coming with him?” he said.

She nodded.

“At five?”

A nod again.

“Why do they want to come here with their lifestyle?” her second brother said. He is a government employee, the type no one misses but everyone needs. Not that he thinks that’s his job. His life revolves around movies.

About two decades back, when the second brother got married, the village had asked the same question. The family had got together in that house. The situation was tense then too. His love-bride was from a sect that does not accept a match from outside. Politically influential too. There were lots of brickbats of the verbal and the violent sort. Politicians and hoodlums got involved. They did not enter the village. No one dared to face her.

“She’s the Michael Corleone of the family,” the movie buff said, at the end of that day.

“Am I Sonny?” the elder brother, a fresh IAS officer then, said. “Or Fredo?”

“Who am I?” the third brother said. He started an IT company in the early 90s, now a billion-dollar firm.

“You can be Connie or Tom,” the movie buff said.

It didn’t matter who they were as long as their sister was Michael.

“We are like Superman,” the movie buff said at another time. “There’s a telephone booth just outside the village where we drop the suit and become Clark Kent.”

She managed their land. She got the ancestral house and an acre around the house. The rest of the 70 acres went to the brothers. They lived in the city. They got their share of profit from her work. They had thought of asking her to take a part of that. For your toil and trouble, they could have said. She does not need much, they thought.

The current tense situation began six months back. She seemed unperturbed at first glance. Unapproachable, quiet as usual and working from dawn to dusk or even more. It was the fear in her eyes that troubled them. Not just the family.

The village too. If they were supposed to accept an outsider, that too without raising a question, why is it different when it is her son?

 

She got married a year after her parents died. Barely out of her teens. The marriage lasted 24 hours. She was raped by her husband. In that house. Not rape according to the law of the land. She nearly killed him that night. Made it clear to all what the law in the village should be and will be. No one in the village knows what she did to him. It was enough for him and his family to disappear from the village. Without a case. Leaving a reputation no one would forget.

She did not occupy any position of power. She rarely met people. What she did and what she could do changed the village. She has not got into any confrontation after that. The threat that hangs above one’s head has proved to be more effective.

It is not that the village has turned into some kind of Utopia. They are bad less often. When democracies and legal systems around the world gave way to the whims and threats of authoritarian rule, the village scoffed at the news. Their own legal system seemed intact.

When her fear became known, that too began to crumble.

A poster came up in the market.

“Even gods are hypocrites.”

Some, including most in her family, were relieved. Her exacting standards were stifling them.

 

She was a quiet girl before her marriage. A quieter lady after that night.

Her brothers did not ask her what she had done when they found her burning bloodied sheets just before dawn. They did not ask anything when she was pregnant or when her son was born. Not that she would have had much to say.

Knowing her character, she must have dealt with lists of questions. Will the beast stay away? Will it return through her kid? Will it be murder then?

The kid spoke only after he joined kindergarten. A normal kid otherwise.

She was a good mother. That is, if there’s an absolute and objective idea about being a good parent. One can study the product though. The son grew up reasonably happy and definitely secure. As it must be for every fortunate kid, if one could generalise, there was something missing. There’s little the kid can do about that other than accept it with regular bouts of serious self-pity.

Is there anything about them that can’t be swept under the carpet? For the sake of completeness, let’s not forget that. There was one aspect of the son’s life that was always under severe scrutiny. His interactions with the opposite sex.

There was a hushed-up incident when he was 14. He and a girl from his class disappeared for 6 hours. Exploring his family’s land, he said later. Someone reported the girl’s cry for help. Another said she was bleeding when they resurfaced.

“She was like the Ugra Devi,” the villagers remember the mother’s response. “Blood, even her own, would not have been enough.”

The girl’s family managed to convince her not to do anything. Whatever they did, right or wrong, as long as the issue remained alive, only their daughter would suffer, they said.

Did she punish her son? Was he innocent or guilty? Were the kids chased by a wild boar, as some said.

“Our Mother Goddess has multiple identities, the bloody-thirsty vengeful Ugra Devi to the kind Mother. This one, our self-imposed protector, she has only one face,” the villagers grumbled.

Did that event change the son’s life? Not really. Every teenager in this village faced something similar at some point or the other. Isn’t that why they try to fly the coop as soon as they can? For that, or other boring academic purpose, her son too did that after finishing school at 18.

 

She waited for her son to come back to that house where she suffered the night of terror. She could have changed residence but she knew the ghosts would follow. The family and the village saw a woman untouched by her past. They did not know about her nightmares. In that, her son returns with a woman and it happens again. In the best dream, there’s proper closure. The beast buried forever. Along with her and her son. Such thoughts would have driven any other mother stark raving mad.

Others did not know about all that. It did not help that she kept it all to herself. Some shrink or friend could have helped her face her son, from tiny tot to adult, without seeing the beast that left her son. Or, they would have put her worries in some well-studied slot, shared advice that could help only if she changed herself totally.

 

Her son is in a hedge fund now. Flies back home for a few days’ visit once every six months. He has an apartment in central London. Six months back, his mother got to know that he was living together with a lady.

His handling of that communication could have played a part in the current impasse. Why did the son announce his living status on the extended family’s WhatsApp group without a quiet, literally and figuratively, tête-à-tête with his mother?

There were the expected responses to his message from his uncles. Best wishes. And, when are you getting married? 

“We don’t want to get married,” her son posted, without an emoji, austere, matter of fact.

“But, your kids?” Tom-or-Connie responded. Again, without emoji.

“No kids either.” And, to leave the last word on the topic, her son had added, “

”

He did not post any photos of his new found love. The mystery lady did not show any inclination in communicating with his family.

His mother isn’t on any WhatsApp group. A niece told her about the goings on. That kid’s in the rebellious teen mode and considers her aunt to be the perfect role model.

Her brothers expected a long brood. The fear seemed totally out of character. They did not broach that topic with her. Not that they did that on anything.

 

It remained a faraway London affair till he called his mother two days back.

“We are coming to meet you,” he said.

“Here?” she said.

“Will you come here?”

“I will get a passport.”

“We are coming, Ma.”

“Get her a hotel room,” she said.

“But, Ma…”

“She and you are not sleeping together under this roof.”

Her son knew enough about his past not to argue. He was not really surprised that a rational person like his mother could take such a stand. Rational thought is fine if one can forget the trauma one suffered. He also accepted the implicit accusation. A father can screw up a son’s life even without being there, he thought.

 

“What will she be like?” the movie buff said.

“What’s his type?” his wife said.

“The one he ran away with was bubbly and cute,” the IAS officer said.

“So, the exact opposite of his mother,” his wife said.

The others joined in. The kids too. They did that every time they were in that house. Talked as if they were the only ones there.

“He was 14.”

“Did he run away with her?”

“Who knows.”

“He barely escaped being skinned alive.”

“By her folks?”

“No idiot. By her.”

“Oh.”

“Will he be like his father?”

“Come on, men have changed. Those were different times.”

“Have you talked to women recently?”

“Come on, was I ever like that?”

“Ha. How many times should I have done what your sister did to him?”

“She went a bit overboard.”

“Women can be their own worst enemies.”

“The kids are here. That’s the only reason I’m not saying more.”

“They are living together. It can’t be bad between them.”

“Ask the married people who have suffered each other for decades.”

“It must be different there.”

“When two people live together, there will be always be something to crib about.”

“Why haven’t they posted photos?”

“She’s not on social media.”

“She can’t be sweet and bubbly then.”

“Hey, any bets on the sweet cutey pie bubby type.”

“I’m in with a 50.”

“Me too.”

“What’s your type, hubby dear?”

“Don’t you know.”

 

Her son brought his partner home at six in the evening.

It was the tropical equivalent of a cold winter night. Torrential rain, gusty wind, power failure.

“The perfect art movie,” the movie buff said, “first, there was silence, then, there’s darkness.”

They sipped tea with exaggerated slurps of appreciation, loudly munched the savouries and said nothing. That was normal in the presence of the lady of the house. They quickly realised that it was not abnormal in the company of the new lady of the house too. The son seemed to be the only one there comfortably at home. He happily answered all the questions directed at his partner. Is she deaf and dumb, the extended family wondered.

The mother went to the kitchen. The son’s partner followed her.

“Knife-fight at the Kitchen Ledge,” the movie buff said. He tried to whistle a Morricone tune. His wife silenced him with a jab to the ribs.

 

They stared at each other in the dark. Two from the same mould. The mother was uncomfortable with her son’s choice. Freud and Oedipus be damned.

“Is he ok with you?” 

“Yes.”

“You can stay here.”

“Does that mean I’m banished to the hotel?” the son said from outside the kitchen. He had followed them.

“Should we?” his partner asked his mother.

Their smiles remained hidden in the dark. They had a reputation to protect.