A cup of cold chai

Aroma of ginger and cardamom lingered in her daughter’s living room.

Saraswati was sitting in her usual chair, a small table on her right-hand side, with a steaming cup of chai and plate full of biscuits. She was slumped in the chair, her left elbow supporting her chin and her right hand on the arm of the chair, ready to pick up her cup of chai. Her beady eyes were glassy, fixed on a crumb of biscuit on the floor. Her wrinkled face seemed drawn downward. Those lines had been carved by years of frowning, permanent scowls bracketing her lips, aggravated by the recent loss.

She tried to ignore the many people who had gathered, all talking and sniffling at the same time. Saraswati was aware of her daughter’s feet pass in front of her, her fall of saree raised just enough to be able to walk in the hurry, missing that rogue biscuit crumb again and again as she walked past. Since morning, she had been making endless trips: to the kitchen with an empty tea tray, back to the living room with a tray full of steaming cups of chai, the scent of ginger lingering in her wake.

Saraswati thought of the times when she had been the one making these trips with cups full of chai rattling on the tray. Many of the people she had served litres of chai, deep in the night were present even here, albeit a bit older and tired. She had felt an outsider, an observer then as she did now. Those people had also tried to pull her into their conversations, to pretend to care about her opinions, to help her move on.

She lifted her gaze to watch all the people who had gathered. All had worked with her husband at some point, learnt at his hands, struggled beside him, and given their everything to make the lives of the unprivileged better. Just as her husband – Raghunath - had.

Pandemic be damned, they had streamed in one after another, like a procession with no beginning and no end.

The first to arrive had been the local doctor at dawn. The very same one who had been visiting for the past week.

Saraswati had been sitting on her bed, as usual, in the room across from her husband’s. Like every night, she had not been able to sleep; insomnia had been her lifelong bane. Generally, she would be awake at such unhuman hour and wait for sleep to come back to her. That day though, she woke a little earlier, as if something told her she must. She had known then, even before she heard her daughter’s soft sob, that Raghunath was gone.

Saraswati had simply gone back to her bed and fallen asleep. Sun was just rising by the time her daughter came to wake her. Rudely too, from the sweetest dream – her children laughing with Tatya, her husband coming into the kitchen following the aroma of his favourite Shira she had been cooking.

She had known immediately that it was not real. The aromatic smells of Shira and the boiling chai thick with ginger that she had made in the dream made her mouth water even as she realised it was only the phantom a distant memory, or her imagination.

She had been far too happy in the dream for it to be real. She had not been that happy in a very long time.

When the doctor had come and gone, confirming what they already knew. Saraswati had just gone through her morning routine – ablutions, tying her thinning hair in a tight braid – only this time she picked up the saree she had never wore. A gift on her 65th wedding anniversary by her husband, the one she had thrown at his face and carried with her everywhere she went.

Her daughter had dutifully served her fresh cup of chai, with exactly two Parle-G biscuits like always. She knew she should say something, act in the expected way of grief and sadness. She simply couldn’t. Not yet.

Only when she finished her chai and biscuits, did she ask to see her husband. He was lying on his back, his favourite woollen blanket pulled up to his chest, hands folded on his stomach. He never slept like this. Her husband always slept like a child, blankets tangled around his body, his legs pulled up to chest, sleeping on his side. She knew then that he would never wake up.

She had tried nevertheless, in those five weak minutes – scolding him, shaking him, falling on to his chest and howling with grief.

Afterwards, she returned to her favourite chair among the strangers who had come to mourn Raghunath. Some cried, some shared stories, some spoke endlessly about what a great man he had been—as though they had truly known him.

When someone addressed her, she reached for her chai only to find it cold, a thin skin formed on top. Disgusted, she set it down and searched the floor for the biscuit crumb that had occupied her earlier. It had been swept away.

And without that small distraction, the thoughts returned.

Who was she supposed to be angry with now?

Who would she blame for life’s little disappointments, argue with over newspapers, or speak to late into the night while he snored beside her?

What was she supposed to do now that her husband of more than seventy years was dead?

• • •

Saraswati was born in 1929. When her father died, her uncle had taken the responsibility of her family. She couldn’t tell if her mother was relieved or grieving – she had been a shell of herself since she had lost three babies in row in last five years. So it was up to her to run the household, cook for her two older brothers and two younger sisters. She didn’t complain, but she felt pity for herself, for having to leave school.

One day when her uncle came to her mother, with the offer to marry Saraswati to his revolutionary friends son – she was not sure what she should feel. At sixteen she was married, stepping into the unknown.

To her surprise her father-in-law, Tatya, and her new husband were the real revolutionaries. They didn’t only fight for the independence of India, but also wanted to improve lives of half of their future country. They encouraged her to continue her school, to learn, to actively participate in their lively discussions on what needed to be done to build a strong nation, once it was free of British Rule.

That was the first time, she had felt alive. Truly happy.

Her days were filled with household chores, school and homework, helping Tatya with scribing whatever letters or pamphlets he wrote for the revolution. Her nights, though, were her husbands. Some of them were enjoyable, but she was clueless what this joy would result into.

Then just before her matriculation exams, she gave birth to her first child. Everyone around her was overjoyed. And in truth, she was too. However, she wondered if her true joy would have to be sacrificed for the bundle of joy at her breast.

It was Tatya who convinced her it didn’t have to be that way. That she could be a mother and a woman with big dreams. That he would help at home, so she could study, make something of herself. Her husband was supportive too. So, she persisted.

After more than a decade of struggling her wifely duties, five children and Tatya’s declining health, she earnt her master’s degree in the new program of Mumbai University.

Tatya was the proudest of her achievement – one of the very few women in Independent India to achieve such high education. Her husband gifted her with a simple golden bangle. But she knew she was a pariah of the society now.

Everywhere she went, she heard how lucky she was to have such a husband. How blessed, to have a father-in-law to do her work for her at the house. How headstrong she must be to leave her children at home to learn history. And for what, so she could feel special? She must have been lazy, to spend her time reading tomes, instead of doing her duty as a woman.

She tolerated it all, because she knew it was just the talk of people who didn’t know what it took to dream bigger than their small lives. She knew she was lucky, and was grateful for the support she had from her family; however, she also knew that without her strong will and perseverance she could not have achieved it.

When her husband climbed the positions in his job in the government, she decided to start working in a school. To start practicing what she had been preaching at their family discussions: improve education for girls.

Revolutionary work though, is not easy. She was too qualified; she was too female to start challenging the male dominated school system in the new India. When she would propose an idea, she would have to make sure it was bullet-proof. Even then she would be overridden by the hierarchy. If she still found a way around, she would be hindered by many aspects of life.

Girls were needed to learn to become homemakers. They had no use of books; the parents would say.

Not everyone has a husband to pay for a maid or a father-in-law to care for children, other women would admonish.

She petitioned to the local governmental bodies. She made litres of chai, cooked dinners for people who could influence the schools in the area.

Just when she was hopeful, things could change for better; Tatya died. And to make things worse, she realized she was pregnant again. At 34, as her sixth child was born, she had to prioritize her children and home over revolutionising education system.

She was heartbroken. And this time there was no Tatya to tell her to keep going on, to support her when she stumbled.

Her husband understood her pain, her sorrow of having to leave her dreams behind. But he could do no more than support her emotionally. Eventually, he left his government position to do real work for the under-privileged. He founded a social work organization with like-minded friends, raised funds through donation and such.

Raghunath tried to involve his wife into his work. Saraswati was by then bitter. She was exhausted by caring for her children, raising her daughters with confidence. But then her children started coming home crying or angry because someone would tease them about their mother being “loose” or “too foreignized”. She was helpless against such taunts. She had been experiencing something similar for long now. The women she had tried to convince to continue their daughters’ education talked behind her back all the time. All the same hoping she heard them laugh at her, or call her names.

She had lost her appetite for being strong and different.

As her children became adults, her husband became famous and successful; she started to despise the hypocrisy of the society.

Why was it that a man could win the battle for the better education for girl’s education, but a woman could not?

Why is sacrifice called virtue only when women are the ones sacrificing?

Why did society praise Saraswatibai Phule in speeches, but resent women who tried to follow her path?

Why did everyone speak of changing the nation, but nobody wanted to change the home?

Why is ambition respectable in a man but selfish in a woman?

So she chose to remain at home, alone, waiting for her husband to return from his heroic work. She buried her anger and disappointment at society. Replacing it instead by showing support for her husband’s work. She occupied herself by cooking meals for his comrades, keeping the supply of chai unbroken on the nights they planned the protests or hunger-strikes.

She replaced her resentment by worry for her husband’s safety.

She worried constantly—whether he was safe, whether his silent protests had angered the authorities too much, whether he had landed in jail again. During his hunger strikes, anxiety sat inside her like a stone.

She would stay awake late into the night waiting for him to return. She wrote letters and telegrams just to know he was safe. And when he finally came home, she made sure he was comfortable—cooking his favourite meals, listening quietly to stories of protests, arrests, meetings and struggles.

But over time, the loneliness slowly twisted that constant worry into resentment.

She still cooked his favourite meals, but now pretended not to care whether he ate them. She began blaming him for the emptiness of her life, shouting at him over trivial things, trying desperately to remind him that however admired he was out in the world, at home he was simply a husband who had left her alone too often.

When Raghunath finally decided, at eighty-three, that he was too old to keep trying to reform the world, he told Saraswati softly that he would not leave her alone anymore.

She exploded.

Too late, she told him. Far too late.

Had he not pushed her to continue studying all those decades ago, perhaps she would never have known what she had lost. Perhaps she would have remained an ordinary housewife and been content with it. Instead, he had taught her to dream, only to leave her standing at the edges of his life—watching him achieve the greatness she had once wanted for herself.

She told him that if he had truly been modern, truly progressive, he would not have left her carrying child after child while he changed the world outside. She would have achieved something too then, instead of spending her life cheering quietly for the husband who received all the glory.

• • •

Saraswati had known even then—as had Raghunath—that none of it was true.

He had simply become the easiest person to rage against. The safest target for all the disappointment she had carried for decades. Her true resentment lay elsewhere: with a society that had never truly allowed women to dream freely, and perhaps even with nature itself, for making women bear both life and the burden of sustaining it.

But it was too late for such thoughts now.

Raghunath was gone.

And she was still here, utterly alone, with room full of people and a cup of cold chai.