Amma's blouse: Part 1

Amma’s mind was like her blouse, distant from her body. Sticking around uncomfortably, only to be discarded.

In my Amma’s time, women did not wear underwear. Bras were also stitched as a single piece. They didn’t have a hook. I am not sure how they were worn. May be they just fit and what with Indian tailors, they had a way of knowing what works for which body type.

When we got a refrigerator, mixie and a black-and-white TV, the bra with the hooks showed up on the clothesline. I am only guessing about the timeline coinciding with the coming of materialism. I was too little to find out but going by how Amma swayed in her China silk sarees in the 1980s, and the preparation of jams at home, it seemed like we were prosperous enough to make significant changes.

But I don’t think prosperity alone had anything to do with wearing underwears and bras.

Many years later, Amma stopped buying bras. I am not sure when. Possibly, when she didn’t feel like wearing them. She developed a trouble with wearing sarees that felt heavy to drape around specific curvatures, ascents and descents on her body. Either it was too heavy to toss over her shoulder or drop from her waist after tucking the pleats in. She disliked anything sophisticated or with fine embroidery touching her skin. I am quite sure that if she was born in my time, she would have moved around with a Tee and shorts, braless at 60, unhinged, despite her orthodox views on most other matters in life.

It roughly came around her 60th birthday when my sister and I decided to gift her a Mysore silk saree that she so longed to wear. At least, that was my sister’s version of what Amma wanted in her life. Every child perceives a parent’s desires differently based on what they saw from the time they started seeing things around at home. I thought she had enough to cover her back. She might have wanted different things from what she had, but that is always the case with anyone in the world.

When I was in college, there was one time when I felt she had other desires. When my father, otherwise quite progressive and quite a feminist, remarked, “I don’t like her in those transparent, thin sarees.” He didn’t say that he didn’t like to see her in them, but that he didn’t like her in them. Possibly, it was the heat. She often turned the fan knob higher even in December and would stand right below the fan and sway her saree pallu back and forth in front of her chest. Come to think of it now, it must have been the menopause. She had entered her 50s and I, into my adulthood. Both of us were cantankerous, I suppose. Or, in a hurry.

She would change her sarees at least thrice a day due to sweating, and what with blouses. As soon as we returned home from anywhere, she would run to the loo. Then, unwind her saree and blouse and drop them in a heap on the sofa or the bed. She was particularly callous and hurried in her approach as if she wanted to get rid of anything on her body.

Usually, it was my father or me who picked up her clothes, folded or put them on a hanger or clothesline. The sweaty blouse would either be rinsed off in water or simply left to dry on the clothesline.

It was procedural to ward off anything that stuck to her skin - clothes or people, despite her rich social life. She made friends easily on the road, in the temple, in the bazaar and with neighbours.

But with clothes and touch, she was hurried and didn’t want proximity. I have never been able to recall a single moment from my life of having her touch me. I don’t remember putting my head on her lap or having her palm gently pat my head, or even receive a mild hug. The only photograph I have from college was me putting my arms around her. She was laughing more than me. That was a frame to keep for life. Even if I would rest my head over her lap, she would be restless and her thighs would keep going up and down or sideways and my head would bobble and toss in the air. She would soon get up to go to the kitchen or wonder what she had to do. She would forget what she had to do, but not respond to someone’s need for intimacy.

She rarely spoke of herself. Usually, it would be some chatter in the bazaar, some gossip about an aunt, or something on TV. But little did she talk about her feelings, her discomfort or desires.

There was no way of knowing her except for watching her. Her eyes darted constantly, and she kept moving her feet.

We wish to know ourselves through our mothers, how they experienced the world. But when there is little emotional transaction, the matter is insufficient to carve your own piece of wood to touch and remember the contours of your emotional windings.

I don’t know what unnerved her about touch. Or intimacy of any kind - with oneself, others, ideas, emotions.

But my father spoke of things that bothered him or brought him joy, even though he would have outbursts of anger from time to time. Did he lack intimacy in the relationship or was not emotionally understood by his spouse that led to the outbursts? Or, did Amma shut up in fear? Both of them, despite having brilliant minds, lacked emotional clarity to learn from. But my father was better; he processed, analysed and found ways to rummage through the clutter. He also spoke of ways he handled discomfort in life — not all the time, though. I could hazard a guess in areas where he struggled. You draw compassion when you share your fears with a child.

With Amma, there was no way of supporting her when you didn’t know what she was made of.

It took a lot of effort through my growing up years, even during adulthood, to understand why she was uncomfortable with herself, as if she couldn’t stand her own skin. I was not sure if she was having her blouse stitched rather loose or if she was shrivelling up. It was a way of discarding anything that came close to her skin.

Amma’s mind was like her blouse, distant from her body. Sticking around uncomfortably, only to be discarded.

Only once did she open up about an incident in her college days in IIT Madras or was it at IIT Kharagpur? I asked her why she had dropped out of IIT. I knew she had taken ill, but nobody gave me a clear answer. She said she was standing in a balcony and saw the trees swaying.

“What did you see in the trees?”

“Nothing really. There was something moving among the trees.”

“Then?”

“I don’t remember. There must have been an object moving. I don’t know.”

“What happened to you?”

“I fell dizzy and fainted.”

I watched her say these words as she stared into the empty space as if she were narrating a story.

“Ayyo-oo. Leave it. It’s so long ago. I don’t remember those days.”

She got up to go to the kitchen and forgot what she had to do as usual. “Where did I keep my glasses?”

Amma had a way of skirting any topic that needed a deeper understanding of the self.

I would follow her into the bedroom, kitchen with questions, which she discarded like her sweaty blouse on a sofa.

The answers never came and I forgot to ask further. Rather, I didn’t learn to get her out of her misery. I watched her, wondered about her possible situation and because I hadn’t processed it enough with her, the emotions came out mixed in a potpourri of rage, disgust and control. I wanted to get out of her hold on me. She watched me and perhaps wondered what was bothering me. It was mostly born out of fear, not from a desire to understand.

I couldn’t find a way to ask her obvious questions about being the only woman engineer among hundreds of men in the country’s premier tech institute - IIT (the Harvard of India). She had long locks, had a dark complexion with classic Dravidian features of a quiet dove waiting to perch. She had a brilliant mathematical mind that she couldn’t make sense of.

Amma had topped her village school in the 1960s with a hundred percent. Her brother, realising her potential, recommended that she study electrical engineering at IIT Madras. There were no seats for women at IIT Madras, so she was sent to IIT Kharagpur in West Bengal. There were five women who came to IIT Madras in 1963 who perhaps went elsewhere - I am not sure. The women, I believe, returned in their 3rd year of college to Madras when they finally started admitting women students. She was in the first batch of women engineers from IIT Madras. She must have been a catch.

I don’t think she was aware of her attractiveness. Nor her abilities. Often, women are made to stay out of touch with themselves, because it doesn’t matter what they think. More so, when those are matters of numbers, parallelograms and arithmetic that one wishes to play around with.

Someone had to remind her, because she was too careless about what she was capable of — like a sweaty blouse aimlessly hanging on a clothesline.

Appa came in like a messiah, the way Irawati Karve had her husband finding a way to make sense of her. The trouble is he had a talent for scouting the talented, troubled woman. Amma was no Irawati.

But he was on the lookout for a rescue mission.

The blouse was fluttering away, not within his grasp.

(To be continued. Part 2 can be read here.)

Image is representative. (Source in image)