Because I am an organiser, here’s what I told my wife to put in her bags before leaving to spend a week in Mumbai nursing her mother through a surgery: wash-and-wear workday clothes, walking shoes (hospitals require you to do a lot of traipsing up and down), an inflatable pillow (for when you need to bed down but they won’t give you a room because the patient is in an intensive care unit), several books, her reading glasses, a torch (don’t ask me why, it’s something my parents always pack) and a framed picture of the family should she miss us. Turning her back on what I felt was sound advice, here’s what she packed instead: party wear in unsuitable chiffons and sequinned georgettes, her highest heels and Christian Dior shades, a case full of shampoos and crèmes and lotions and lipsticks, gifts as giveaways — and her address book.
“Take a bottle of Tabasco,” I suggested, “hospital food can be terribly bland,” but she preferred to carry dark chocolates instead. When I thought she might require extra cash, she retorted, “I have my cheque book and my cards.” “You’re distraught,” I told her, “which is why your sense of judgement is flawed.” “Will you,” said my disturbed wife, “shut up and get out of my way before I kill you?” Hopefully, one of the doctors at the hospital would realise that she was hyperventilating and slip her a couple of Valiums.
If I’d thought she would station herself on ward duty beside her mother, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Leaving the task of measuring out the medicines, or doing her mother’s hair, or turning her over in her bed to her care-givers, here’s what my wife did instead. She went out for lunch to clubs by the sea and to tea at homes in the heart of the city, to walks in parks and for cocktails with friends, for movies and for sales. “How’s your mum?” I’d ask, worried about her health, only to be told, “She’s fine, gotta run, am late for shopping.”
Her brother said she spent all of her time catching up or gossiping with friends. Her mother, when I spoke to her, couldn’t recall whether her daughter was or wasn’t in town – she hadn’t, she said, seen her in a while – but that might have been only the effect of her medication.
She switched her travel plans, extending her visit not because she needed to stay longer with her mother but because she was having so much fun. She criss-crossed the city, renewed acquaintances, had her hair styled, bought handbags and shoes and clothes because, she said, she’d put on weight. She even pinched her brother’s car to drive around though her driver’s licence had long expired.
Back in Delhi, my daughter was packing to go off on a holiday with her friends — would my wife be back to see her off? “I’m needed here,” she said, “my mother wants all the help she can get.” Did she want me to come over and hold her hand – my mother-in-law’s, not my wife’s – if it helped? “Don’t be silly,” she admonished, “I don’t want you and my mother discussing me behind my back.” “We won’t talk about you,” I promised, “besides, you’ll be there with us.” “If you think I’m going to hang around with you guys the whole day,” she sighed, “you can think again — and now I must go, my taxi is waiting.”
Finally, yesterday, she called to say she would be coming home next week. “Are you done with everything?” I asked sarcastically. “Not let me see,” she said, “going out, yes; fine dining, yes; shopping, yes — I’ve even got you,” she added cheekily, “a bottle of Tabasco.”