The flat was smelling heavily of spices. The smell of rich ghee, roasted cumin, strong garam masala, and the sweet smell of cardamom. It was the smell of a grand feast, the type of feast we Indians are making only for Diwali or weddings. And in the middle of the drawing-room, on the diwan covered with traditional print cloth, my wife was lying collapsed….
I found my wife collapsed in exhaustion on the sofa and our young child screaming, while my mother sat nearby eating the dishes she had forced my wife to cook.
The Taste of Final Memories
The boiling heat of New Delhi in June is always having a way of squeezing out the energy of software engineers like me. When I squeezed out of the noisy auto-rickshaw and entered my flat, my shirt was fully drenched in sweat. My head was paining after ten hours of staring at code, and the only thing I was wanting was a hot cup of chai and my wife’s smile.
But when I put the key in the lock and pushed the heavy wooden door open, one terrible scene hit my eyes, destroying all hopes for a peaceful evening.
The flat was smelling heavily of spices. The smell of rich ghee, roasted cumin, strong garam masala, and the sweet smell of cardamom. It was the smell of a grand feast, the type of feast we Indians are making only for Diwali or weddings.
And in the middle of the drawing-room, on the diwan covered with traditional print cloth, my wife was lying collapsed.
She was still wearing her cotton salwar kameez, the dupatta hanging down to the floor. Her hair was sticky with sweat and atta (flour), eyes tightly shut, chest heaving with the heavy breathing of someone who is fully exhausted.
Right near the legs of the diwan, our two-year-old son was rolling on the carpet, crying at the top of his voice, nose running and tears falling. The baby was reaching his small hands towards his mother, but my wife was not moving even a little bit.
I felt my blood boiling. But the thing that made my anger erupt like a volcano was the scene at the dining table.
Ma – my own mother – was sitting there. She was wearing a gold-bordered silk saree, her attitude terrifyingly calm. On the table was a giant thali with at least eight different items: Chicken Biryani, thick Dal Makhani, bright green Palak Paneer, and even Gajar ka Halwa for sweet. My mother was using her fingers to break a piece of roti, dipping it into the curry bowl, and leisurely putting it in her mouth to chew. She was completely ignoring her screaming grandson and her daughter-in-law who had fainted not even three meters away.
“Oh my god, Ma! What is this you are doing?” I shouted, throwing my briefcase on the floor with a loud bang.
My mother did not look up. She kept on chewing, her fingers stained with yellow turmeric gravy.
I rushed to pick up my crying son on my shoulder, then kneeled down next to my wife. “Bahu… how are you? Wake up, na!” I patted her cheek lightly. My wife only let out a weak groan, cold sweat breaking out on her forehead. She was not sick, she was just drained out of energy to the point of fainting.
This morning, before going to the office, I had loosely heard my mother scolding in the kitchen: “Being a daughter-in-law (Bahu) of this house, you have to cook a proper meal! Don’t give me excuses of tiredness. By this evening, I am wanting to eat all the traditional dishes. You must finish it!”
At that time, I thought she was just grumbling like a typical traditional Indian mother-in-law – the ones who are always considering kitchen work as the only scale for a woman’s virtue. But I did not expect she would be so cruel to force my wife – a woman whose health is already weak these days – to cook a massive feast in this forty-degree heat.
“Are you gone mad?!” I turned around, pointing straight at the dining table, using the broken English I often use when losing my temper. “What overacting are you doing here, huh? She is doing so much office work to run this house, and you are making her cook like a servant? Just to satisfy your stomach? You are eating nicely while your grandson is screaming and your daughter-in-law fainted? Are you not having any shame?”
My mother swallowed the food. Slowly, she took a tissue paper, wiping clean her turmeric-stained fingers. She looked up at me.
I was fully expecting to see angry eyes, a familiar scolding about how I am taking my wife’s side and forgetting the mother who gave me birth. But no.
My mother’s eyes were fully red. Silent tears were rolling down her wrinkled cheeks, falling onto the edge of her silk saree. She was crying.
“Beta (Son),” my mother said, her voice hoarse, choking but very clear. “You are always in a hurry only. You only know how to look with your eyes, but you are never using your brain to understand.”
She pushed herself up from the chair. She didn’t come towards me, but walked to the kitchen counter. From behind the fruit basket, she took out a family camcorder carefully mounted on a tripod, and a thick leather-bound notebook. She brought them and dropped them with a thud on the glass teapoy in front of me.
“Open that notebook, Beta,” she ordered.
I frowned, holding my sobbing son with one hand, opening the notebook with the other.
The pages were soaked with the smell of spices and yellow turmeric stains. But the thing that squeezed my heart was the handwriting. It was my wife’s handwriting. But, instead of her usual soft, neat writing, these letters were miserably scribbled, shaky, and broken.
1 teaspoon cumin powder… no, 2 spoons… I am not remembering properly… Why am I not remembering my son’s favorite Biryani? Ma, help me…
I snapped my head up to look at my mother. “What… what is this? Why is her handwriting like this?”
My mother took a deep breath, wiping away a tear that was about to fall.
“Six months back,” my mother said, her voice breaking. “When you went for your US onsite, I took Bahu for a checkup. The doctors at Apollo hospital gave the report. She is having Early-onset Alzheimer’s – a very rare and fast-progressing disease in young people, inherited from her maternal side.”
My ears started ringing. The room was spinning. Alzheimer’s? My wife? She is only thirty-two!
“She strictly told me not to tell you,” my mother sobbed. “She said you are taking pressure for your promotion, she didn’t want to become a burden. But last month, her condition became very bad. Are you remembering last week she forgot the way to pick up our child from the crèche? You thought she was absent-minded because of office work. No, Beta. She is slowly forgetting everything. This week, she started forgetting how to hold a spoon, forgetting even to put salt in the dal.”
I looked down at my wife lying unconscious on the diwan. My chest pained like thousands of needles were piercing through. So her tiredness, her forgetfulness was not because of office tension. She was slowly losing her memories, losing her own self.
“For two days, she went into deep depression,” my mother continued. “She locked herself in the room. She was saying she wants to die. She said that in just one year, she will become an empty shell, she won’t be able to remember this boy’s face, won’t remember the taste of your favorite dish. She was planning to give up, Beta. She wanted to give up!”
My mother stepped forward, snatching the notebook from my hand.
“I am an old-fashioned Indian mother-in-law, I am accepting that. I don’t know how to use sweet words or modern psychology,” my mother tapped her finger hard on the notebook. “But I know how to make sure a woman in this house is not allowed to break down! This morning, I pulled her out of bed. I played the role of a wicked mother-in-law. I shouted at her. I forced her to enter the kitchen, I made her cook again all the best dishes she has ever cooked for this family!”
She pointed at the camcorder on the kitchen counter.
“I forced her to cook, and I switched on the camera to record everything. I made her read aloud every recipe, every spoon of spice, every small secret. When her hands were shivering too much to cut the onion, I held her hand and cut it together. When she forgot the next step, I forced her to try and remember. For five full hours, I forced her dying brain to work at its highest level, so she can preserve the legacy of a mother, a wife!”
My tears were falling uncontrollably. I fell to my knees on the floor, right next to my wife’s diwan. The little boy in my arms also stopped crying, looking confusedly at his father who was sobbing heavily.
“The boy was crying because he dropped his electronic toy under the cupboard,” my mother said, her voice softening. “I didn’t comfort him, because I was busy using both my hands to keep my daughter-in-law from collapsing near the hot oil pan. She fought until her last bit of strength to finish this meal, before her body couldn’t take it anymore and she fainted.”
I turned my head to look at the dining table. The massive thali with dishes still giving out steam.
“Then… why were you sitting and eating?” I asked, choking up. “Why were you eating it alone?”
My mother walked closer to the dining table, looking at the food with eyes full of deep sorrow and boundless love.
“Because this might be the last complete meal that my daughter-in-law can cook with her own hands,” she whispered. “And I am eating it, to carve this taste into my memory. So that tomorrow, when she forgets who she is, I will be the one entering the kitchen. I will cook exactly this same taste, and I will feed it to her, and I will tell her: ‘Bahu, this is the most wonderful dish created by your own hands’.”
My mother’s words pierced through my arrogance and shallowness like a sword.
While I was always patting my own chest calling myself a modern, civilized husband, always busy with the outside tech world, I was completely blind to my wife’s extreme pain. And the woman I just condemned as a dictator, a cruel person, was the very person who used the most extreme, most painful way to pull my wife out of the abyss of despair, giving her one last purpose in life before the darkness of the disease takes over.
I put my son down on the floor, and crawled to my mother’s feet. Following the most sacred custom of our people, I bent down, pressing my forehead against her bare feet.
“Ma… I am sorry. Please forgive this stupid son of yours,” I sobbed, my tears soaking the border of her saree.
My mother bent down, placing her warm hand on top of my head, giving me a silent blessing.
Just at that time, a soft sound came from the diwan.
My wife slowly opened her eyes. Her face was pale, but when she saw me kneeling at my mother’s feet, and our son clinging to the chair’s leg, she gave a soft smile – a weak but incredibly radiant smile.
“Don’t scold Ma… ji,” my wife whispered weakly, trying to lift her hand.
I rushed forward, tightly holding her hands smelling of spices and atta, pressing them against my face. “I am not scolding. I am knowing everything now. Why did you hide it from me, you idiot?”
My wife dropped tears, looking towards her mother-in-law. “If Ma was not there… today I had planned to end everything. Ma showed me… I can still leave something behind for our son.”
My mother stepped forward, sitting on the edge of the diwan. She did not speak any empty words. She just took a damp cloth, gently wiping away the atta marks on her daughter-in-law’s forehead.
“You are still the Bahu of this house,” my mother said, her voice strong and firm. “And Indian women are never giving up. Even if your brain is not remembering, your heart will remember. Even if your heart forgets, I and this stupid Beta will remember for you. We will fight this disease together, one day at a time.”
That night, in the flat overflowing with the fragrance of ghee and cardamom, there was no shouting of generational conflicts.
The four of us – me, my wife, my mother, and our little son – sat together around the dining table. I used my hand to break a piece of roti, dipped it into the bowl of Palak Paneer cooked by the very hands of my wife who is losing her memories, and put it in my mouth.
The taste was not perfect. It was a little salty, and maybe she had put a little too much chili powder by mistake. But when I swallowed that food, along with my salty tears, I knew that it was the best, greatest meal I had ever eaten in my entire life.
The disease might snatch away her memories in the future. But today, under the cruel but great protection of a mother-in-law, the family videos and the taste of love have been permanently carved into the timeline, so that no darkness can ever wipe it away.
