Kali by Nishi Pulugurtha

I met her three years ago. She came in at a time when things were real bad. I was in desperate need of help. One July afternoon, she came along with an old gentleman. Well-built and tall, she spoke with an accent I could not place.  I guessed her age, she surely was above 65 years. She did not look it though. Draped in a green and blue cotton saree, her hair tied back tightly into a small bun, not a single grey strand visible. The gentleman who chaperoned her assured me that she was very good at caring for ‘patients’ and that I needn’t worry. But then they all say that. It would take me some time to see how she fared. She kept standing as I spoke to her. The gentleman sat down. I motioned her to sit. She looked here and there, I pointed the sofa to her. She looked for a minute and then sat down, a bit reluctant. As I spoke to her about things, her work experience, her ability to look after older people, things I normally made a point to ask, she answered all pointedly. She had been looking after ‘patients’ for quite some years now she said. Her voice was husky but not harsh. 

“How do I address you?” I asked her. “Shall I call you mashi?” 

Most of the carers I had earlier were younger than me and I addressed them by their names. She looked at me for a while and said, 

“Call me by my name, Kali.” I smiled. 

“Show me how things are to be done and in a couple of days I will make sure I learn the ways of your house”. 

She told me that there were certain things she wouldn’t do – she didn’t cook and there was no way she could run errands outside the house. She sure was straightforward – “Any other work related to Mashima, you needn’t bother about,” she said, “once I understand and learn how things are done here”. 

She looked at Ma and asked “kemon achen”. Ma looked up in the direction of the voice and slowly smiled and shook her head. After a while, she spoke a few words about how the spoons were all missing and walked away. She looked disturbed. Kali looked in the direction that ma walked away for a while. Then, she looked at me.  “Shall I go and be with her”, she asked. I nodded and she went in the direction that Ma had gone. In a little while, I saw them both talking as if they had been acquainted for quite some time. This was a good sign, I thought. Ma was seated on her bed and Kali was standing beside the window just opposite the bed. 

“Mashima is sleeping, now,” she said as she came into the kitchen. “Is she your mother in law?” 

I nodded as I went about showing her things. She cleaned up and sat down, listening to all I had to say about Ma and the things that she needed to know. I took her around the house, showing her places and things, constantly talking about how and why and what she needed to know. Most importantly about Ma’s condition. 

“Buri Ma looks alright,” she said. 

That is something all carers said. Ma had dementia, late onset. She did not recognize me. For her I was a familiar face, someone she liked to talk to, someone she felt comfortable with. She became angry and aggressive at times and so it was very important to let the carer know it. She would soon forget about it, smile and talk almost immediately after getting angry, screaming, shouting, hurling cuss words, as if none of it had happened. The only person she recognized was her son. The only person she still identified by name. Sumit was a busy man. When he came home, he said hello to Ma and moved up to his den. He couldn’t be disturbed by the goings on in the house. “I cannot handle so much at a time,” he often said.  I guess I had got so used to it so much that it no longer bothered. We lived like strangers in that house. It kind of worked well that way. 

I am not sure if Kali understood all I told her about Ma’s condition but I did notice that she picked up small little things that would make Ma interested. 

“Mashima is old,” she often said, “and in old age, people often behave differently”. 

She soon became part of the household, caring for Ma. She slowly learned how to talk to Ma, how to divert her attention away from something that caused her anxiety, or troubled her, she knew when to let her be and when to engage in fun and banter. She spoke about her grandchildren, about her children, of her life. And Ma would soon start talking of stories of her childhood. 

Of Boruitala, of that village that had been her home. Of her Ma, her brothers, all those people in her house, of climbing trees, of her brothers fishing, of how they ran and climbed walls, pushed and had fun, of how her mother got angry with her when she climbed trees with her brothers – “Girls do not climb trees and run around like that”. She spoke of how her brothers cared for her – the youngest one in the family, the only sister to six brothers. Hironmoy, Shubhomoy, Barunmoy, Arunmoy, Shukhomoy and Kironmoy – these days she mixed the names up. She spoke of it all as if it was in the present – “I have to go to school, it is time,” she would say and then maybe get angry. She couldn’t see her mother around. As she got agitated Kali sat beside her and said “yes, we will go home, but first let us get dressed”. That was what we tried to do – try to keep her comfortable and happy, try to gauge her mood and go along. Kali learned it all. 

Her home was in a village too, she would say and that is how their conversations would begin. I noticed her repeating the same stories, they made Ma happy, and made her feel nice. At times I could hear both of them at their stories. It did not make much difference to Kali, she listened for a while and then began her stories. At times I almost felt as if both had so much to say and didn’t bother if anyone was listening. They seemed to need a human being around.

She also told me about her life too, in bits and pieces. I asked her about her home as she made me a cup of tea and she sat with hers. Widowed at 25, with four children, she said she lost her parents when she was seven and was raised by her uncle and aunt. 

“I have been working for, god knows, how long,” she went on. “All kinds of work – tilling the land, working in the farm, at the loom, anything that brought in some money. Of all the various kinds of work I did, tilling the land was the most difficult. I was very good at the loom.”

“That is really interesting.”

“Yes, didi, I can do it all. We get the thread from the Mahajan, the design too and we are told the colours to use.”  

 “My uncle and aunt looked after me well when I was growing up, but then we all had to work There were too many mouths to feed. They were nice to me but there was not enough money. I had to help.” 

She took a napkin and cleaned Ma’s mouth. “Here sip a little water.” Ma opened her lips as she took out the glass her mouth. She wiped Ma’s mouth again and washed the tumbler and kept it upside down on the mall table in the corner of the room.  She said beside Ma on the sofa. 

“They got me married too but my fate never changed. My husband died all of a sudden and I had to fend for myself and my children.”

Her husband had suffered a massive heart attack and even before he could be taken to the hospital, it was over. When did she begin this work? I ask her, the caregiving work that is.  “It has been over 15 years now.” 

She enjoyed speaking about her work at the loom,  the way she worked with the threads,  the colours she needed, and the final product. “It was difficult sitting in the pit though.” The payment she got was a pittance but then any bit of money that came in was good. “There has never been a time when I didn’t work,” she said often.  She was folding the dry clothes and stacking them on the bed. “My children are all married, my grandchildren growing up, a few already married. I saw to it that they got what they wanted. At least I tried.”

 “I gave each of my children and grandchildren a gold item, a ring, a pair of earrings for some occasion or the other. I made sure that each one was of equal value.” 

I asked her if  she had kept some money for herself. My experience with earlier carers had told me that none of them saved up. They couldn’t for various reasons. I often spoke to them about setting aside a small sum each month. “I have all the documents, but don’t have an account. My son has one,” Kali said.  “That is good enough for me. He takes good care of me.” She picked up the cups on the table and put them on the kitchen counter. The water flowed from the tap as she washed them. She dried them, put them on the shelf, and went into Ma’s room. I went back to the book lying on the bed. I could hear the voices in the distance as the two old women went on talking, Ma was awake.

Kali had been with me for over three years now. She cared for Ma like a baby. Ma had deteriorated a lot, she was now almost immobile. Kali didn’t take much leave and if she did she made sure that I got a replacement and that Ma was looked after well. A few weeks ago Kali fell ill, a stomach upset, she said when I enquired. The doctor came home, examined her, and prescribed medicines. She answered his questions but did not seem happy with his answers. She was not keen on taking the medicines either.  When I mentioned  them, she took one tablet quite reluctantly. 

That evening she said – “I want to go home, Didi. Please look for a replacement to care for Ma. I will come back once I am well. I will be back in three months.” 

On Tuesday, the substitute carer arrived and Kali spent the whole day explaining things to her. She sat beside Ma mostly, getting up only if she had to show things to the new carer. Early the next morning she left for home. She called me in the evening to say that she was home. We spoke again a few days later. I asked her if she needed anything. She replied in the negative and asked me about Ma and the new carer. “Do not worry Didi, I will join work, the moment I am alright.” 

It has been quite some months now without her. I had grown completely dependent upon her. She never gave me any cause for complaint when it came to caring. The substitute ayah had slowly learned how to go about things, she was a bit slow, but I could see she was making an effort. Kali’s health was not the way it used to be. Age seemed to be catching up on her. She gave me a missed call once in a while. When I called her she gave me updates on her health. I knew she would possibly never be able to come back here. 

In all these years that I had known her, she had never complained about her children. That day, as we spoke she said very softly – “He took away all the money I had.” It took me some time to realize that she was talking about her son.  “He told me to go and stay with my elder daughter. But I will not do that. This is my house. I will stay here.” The last time we spoke was the day after Ma passed away.  Kali was too weak to talk. 

About the Author

Nishi Pulugurtha is an academic and writer based in Kolkata. Her publications include a monograph on Derozio(2010), a collection of essays on travel, Out in the Open (2019), an edited volume of essays on travel, Across and Beyond (2020), a volume of poems, The Real and the Unreal and Other Poems (2020), a collection of short stories, The Window Sill (2021), a co-edited volume of poems Voices and Vision: The First IPPL Anthology(2021). Her recent book is a volume of poems Raindrops on the Periwinkle published by Writers Workshop (2022). An edited volume of critical essays titled Literary Representation of Pandemics, Epidemics and Pestilenceis forthcoming from Routledge.