Travelling alone is no longer a safe proposition for me. The jeopardy is not so much from without as from within me. The taste of freedom (albeit temporary) is dangerously intoxicating to say the least.
Without the children, I suddenly found myself walking at my own brisk pace. I could take the window seat quite automatically without having to relinquish it to the younger ones. Not only did I eat food off the street wagons, I also squatted on the platform while waiting for the bus, walked in the rain chewing paan, swam in the deep side of the pool, used the restroom to my heart’s content without having to inform if it was ‘one or two’, wrote a poem for three full hours without having to get up and make dosas in the middle of a word, cycled downhill with eyes closed, drank beer and joked with friends till wee morning hours and even rubbed moisturiser between toes.
Those days of being alone, I did everything I forbid myself to do or don’t have the luxury of doing in the presence of my children. I realised I had walked in the ‘mom-shoes’ too long and too continuously. So much so, I was putting my hand deep into my own shoes too to check for ants or insects before wearing them. The unexpected pause in my routine life was too delicious, too tricky. It reminded me of how life could be. It showed me how weary I really was. Travelling alone is indeed unsafe.
Where I went is also vital to this experience of tasteful freedom. I was at the Pune FTII dubbing for a short film I had acted in. The Pune FTII is a strange place where dreams and disillusionment sit side by side as comrades.
You will find people with dashed hopes, failed projects and unborn films as populously as those with surging creativity, focus and throbbing enthusiasm. If I was continually contending with two kinds of people — the hopeful and the defeatist outside the studio, I was also engaging with two kinds of myself inside the studio — one onscreen moving and speaking in the skin of another character and one off screen vacillating between the chosen role of mother and the original me.
The entire trip seemed like a metaphor arranged for me by life. A break that would foreground the duality in my own life of being a mother (and hence) with limited ambitions for myself like be the first to drop kids at school, never forget the kerchief in the breast pocket and never pack same snack two days in a row. The real person beneath with secret dreams wants to graduate to swimming in the sea, build enough knee power for a half marathon of 21.5 km, illustrate my own stories,
develop the tenacity to write not just five but a 100 drafts if need be before declaring my book as my book.
My twin ambitions of building mind and body stamina remain mere dreams as I plod through daily routine torn between two personas of mother and writer. Which one was spontaneous and which one was I lip syncing? “You are as good as dead here, the minute you lose hope. You must believe you are the best and that one day some day you will make a film of your own,” said a young director. “I will go into teaching if nothing happens,” said another scratching his beard.
The exuberance of the former was as powerful as the stoicism of the latter.
As I sat sipping tea under a tree, vacillating between hope for my future and stoicism over the present, I knew that the flab of motherhood is sadly not just around the waist but around the mind too.
Mothers voluntarily circumscribe many of their personal goals and some like me conveniently peg the lack of will on motherhood.
Dreams can be deferred for the sake of children, but need not be denied.
I looked up to see the dense umbrella of leaves above me. To think that all that foliage and wood was dormant in a seed — one tiny seed. I hugged the tree and begged it to run its strong sap into my veins too.
I beseeched it for hope, for power to dream, for ability and a fruitful engagement with my will. When I disengaged, I kissed the trunk and broke into a jog.
Jaya Madhavan is a poet and a children’s writer.
jayamails@yahoo.com