Amma went about her normal routine at the maternity home that stood quietly in I.C. Colony, blissfully unaware of the catastrophe that was about to strike so close to the place she called home. She wakes up at four in the morning and relieves Shalini from her night shift. She lights a candle and prays to the photo of the virgin Mary in the break room right after she is done with her morning routine of making tea for all the staff. She says that before god made anything, he made tea. Once she changes into her nurse uniform she strolls down the long corridor of the maternity home. She pops into every room and wishes every mother-to-be a good morning. She’s done this for more than three decades now. And she never forgets to make tea.
The hustle of the market square and the church that expanded its reach behind the hospital, contrasted rather well with the quietness that surrounded Mamta Maternity. But this wasn't like the quietness of any other day, no this felt awfully quiet, it almost hurt. Like the silence between two lovers who don't share the same bed anymore. Like a calm before the storm. And it indeed was.
The loud thud followed by the harrowing screams of children playing in the compound of the 15 story building that stood to the right of Mamta maternity must have disturbed the newborns from their faint slumber. Maybe that is why at six that evening they chose to sing a chaotic song of hunger, all in unison. The mother’s instincts started going haywire as the attendants and Amma rushed to the ward in attempts to lull the babies. At once noticing screams and calls for help, Amma froze in her tracks. She remembered something similar from a time where she had a small family of her own. With almost no money she and her writer husband spent the days running a small tea stall in the area where the hospital now stood. The tea stall brought back just enough money to survive them through the days. Her husband worked nights in the Times of India printing press, the long hours , pressure from his bosses and the lack of happiness in his life led him to lock his secrets up in rum bottles often. Though he never even raised a finger towards Amma she would often find him lying in the streets and gutters around their gully.
She was worried about him, his lack of control over the bottle restricted his control over his pen. He had been trying to get a story published in the Times for about seven months now. He had started to give up. Amma still remembers the day the love of her life left her with just a note and nothing more. The life in the city had gotten to this small town writer and he couldn't take it anymore. All the note read
"I wish I wrote the way I thought;
Obsessively,
Incessantly,
With maddening hunger.
I'd write to the point of suffocation.
I'd write myself into nervous breakdowns,
Manuscripts spiralling out like tentacles into abysmal nothingness.
And I'd write about you a lot more. “
Amma snapped back from her routine flashbacks the moment those words appeared in front of her. Do you know why you wake up at the last second while you're falling in a dream? It's because you don’t know what happens after the fall. You don't know what happens when you hit the ground. All you feel is a sense of danger that you know is over and then you're awake. Amma felt the same.
Amma remembered the silence when she read those words for the first time. She remembered the scream that followed. Jaya Didi who was her neighbour at the time, was her only shoulder to cry on. Jaya helped her get back on her feet and showed her that the world hadn't ended yet, that she was still young and could make something of herself. She was the one who got Amma the job that would go on to define her for the rest of her life. Jaya di had always been around but she and Amma were never so close. Amma often chuckled about the fact that it was often the people you least expect that come to your aid in the darkest of times. Amma and her husband didn't have much, but what little they did have they built all on their own. So it was not easy for Amma to accept Jaya’s help from the very beginning. The idea that someone wanted to help her without standing to gain anything was alien to her. Amma always regretted the fact that she couldn't pay back the debt she owed to Jaya.
Once the babies were back to sleep and the mothers looked calmer, Amma stepped out to see the mortifying sight of a man in his late fifties lying face down in a pool of blood. Pal was the watchman of the high rise that stood next to Mamta maternity, he greeted everyone with a grin so bright you wouldn't even dare to dream of the demons he fought in his own head. He had come to the city in the 90s in search for a stable income, but all he found was odd jobs and debt. The city had not been so kind to him. Back home in Raipur which is a village in the Lucknow district, his now 19 year old daughter Laxmi was to be married and to fund this arrangement he had to sell his farm and move his daughter to Bombay. Pal was growing weary of the debt collectors bugging him everyday, they went as far as breaking into his little single room accommodation at the nearby Ganpatpatil chawl where they even threatened his daughter. Pal had tried his best but his demons eventually got the better of him. He got a call on his old feature phone from the people who had been making his life hell, they said that if he didn’t pay them off by the end of the day they’d come to his home again and won't just threaten his daughter. Call it bad timing or a humble suggestion of the world, Pal was on the terrace of the building checking the meter box when he got the call.
Amma often saw Laxmi bring food for her father in the lazy afternoons and tea in the evenings, she looked like a bright kid Amma often thought to herself. Maybe that's why it took Amma a good second to realize who that tattered and blood soaked uniform belonged to. A blood curdling scream fell upon the area as
Amma rushed to check on what remained of Pal. The people were running crazy trying to call an ambulance. Children cried. The mothers tucked them away back into their homes where they felt safe. Amma was still almost in a daze and then she saw her. Laxmi was on her knees clutching a plastic bag with tea she had brought for her father that evening. She shivered like a woman possessed by something so unholy you wouldn’t dare to take its name. But her face said nothing. Her eyes were blank and in those empty eyes Amma saw a helpless tea selling woman whose writer husband had just left her for a better life.
Amma’s face looked a lot like Jaya’s that evening.
Once the ambulance took Pal away, Amma brought the girl back into the hospital. As they walked through the well lit corridor of the maternity home a man rushed to them and happily offered them both sweets from the box he held in his excited hands. Amma quietly obliged “Arre zara hasiye humare ghar laxmi aai hai!” the man exclaimed. Laxmis’s eyes lingered on the man's ecstatic visage for a little longer as Amma pulled her into the breakroom. Wiping the lonesome tear on her cheek she looked at Amma properly for the first time. Still holding on to the chai she brought she told Amma all about the predicament she and her father were facing. Amma told her not to worry and that she could stay there for as long as she liked. Outside the man, almost in tears and still celebrating the birth of his daughter, was about to enter the breakroom when Amma suddenly shut the door on him. He thought it was a little weird as Amma was really bubbly and always had time for a chat when she came around to their ward. Amma always liked to greet the strangers she had gotten to know so deeply when they left Mamta maternity. She loved to see the anxiety of the mothers-to-be turn into the purest form of joy when they held their babies for the first time. She often said '' Jo admi ko chinta rehta hai na usko baitha ke ek second baat kar leneka, accha lagega usko. Aur idhar na log chinta hi lekar aata hai, isiliye unse na baat karneko aasani hota hai”
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