Cloud 9 Minus One

My mother never had a hobby. There was no time for one. She cooked and she cleaned the house and wiped our asses when we were babies, and stitched our clothes from scraps of fabric gifted to us by various relatives, and after doing all this, she went to work as a schoolteacher. And when she came home, she did everything all over again. On Saturday afternoon, after school, she persuaded my father to take her to a movie. Sometimes he refused, and then there was no movie. And she listened to Vividh Bharati on the radio instead. That, people pointed out snidely to her, was her besetting sin, listening to Vividh Bharati in her spare time.
My father was proud of his own creativity. He wrote letters to the Times of India regularly, almost everyday, sending them in an envelope with a twenty five paise stamp on it. And on Sunday morning he played cards – bridge. The session was every Sunday from ten to four at each player’s place by rotation. So one Sunday a month, my mother spent extra time in the kitchen, cooking for the other three players as well. Sometimes my father would invite my mother to play, but she was a bad player, and everyone became impatient with her, and then she got called by one of us to sort out some quarrel, and that was that.
My life, fortunately, is different from my mother’s. When I work, I have servants to handle all the household chores. I can afford to swim, and play golf, and an occasional game of bridge when the fancy takes me. My best friend devotes an hour every day to her garden, and soon she is planning to start a blog on gardening. My neighbour works in a bank, and on weekends goes hiking in the Sahyadris.
I wish my mother had played bridge on Sundays from ten to four. I think her smile would have been happier.