Amma didn’t say anything and I didn’t know what to do. I sat down next to her on her bed.
Amma’s mattress was soft and fluffy. She still used the same cotton filled mattress her mother gave her as part of her wedding trousseaux. Every time when the mattress gets a bit lumpy, Amma would keep it under the sun for a few hours and it would be back to fluffy and soft.
I remembered each and every time Amma yelled at me for jumping on her treassured mattress. She used to yell at me saying
“My mother spend days inside the closed stuffy room to clean the cotton and make this mattress for me. I won’t let you destroy it”
I used to get so mad at Amma for being such a spoil sport. How could an old mattress get spoiled because I jumped on it? Amma didn’t want me to have fun. That is why she was so mean. I was pretty sure of that.
But as I sat next to her on her bed, I realized that of all the things my mother owned that was eventually shared and divided, this was the only thing that she never gave up. Her mattress followed her where ever she went. Why? I wondered
Why does she still sleep on the old smelly mattress, when she could sleep on the foam mattress Appa got for her?
I realized, May be it was the only link she had with her own mother. May be her memories took her home in a far away land and she didn’t want to lose the only vestige that connected her past to the present.
I felt bad for all the times I snuck behind her back and jumped up and down on her mattress. It was a thrill then and now it was an ache that kept telling me
‘I shouldn’t have’
But the problem with feeling bad is, it is like catching smoke rising from the burning fire. You see it, you smell it and you know it is bad for your health, but you just can’t hold it. It keeps slipping out of your fist and you just can’t contain it.
You know you will only be free of the smoke when the fire burn out! but even that isn’t in your hand.
“I need to pay Sally’s school fess by next week” Amma whispered
“How much?”
“12,000RS”
I thought I really didn’t hear the amount
“What? How much did you say Amma?” I asked again
“12,000 Rs. I have to pay school admission fees, transfer fees, uniform fees, sports fees, this fees and that fees. They have so much of fees to pay!”
“Goodness Amma, That is a lot of money. Why is it so expensive?”
“Expensive? This is nothing. If I had told the truth that your great father works for the Queen and you are not Indians, then we would be looking at Lakhs!”
“oh! What did you tell them?” I asked her
“I told them that your father is dead” Amma shrugged her shoulder
I was to stunned to react. How could she? How could she tell that Appa was dead? He is her husband for heaven’s sake.The man who tied the minnu around her neck
“Anyway he is as good as dead No?” Amma was looking at me.
I didn’t reply. What do you tell? How do you defend a man like my father? I wanted to defend him, but I couldn’t.

I didn’t want to ask, but desperate situation calls for desperate measures.
“Amma, Have you tried asking Maria for money?”
“Ofcourse I did Nina! Do you think I am that stupid?”
“What did she say?”
“What she said? Do you want to know what she told me?”
Amma was staring at me.
” She told me, Amma,You should have known You have children and should have saved up for their education. She told me, I shouldn’t have had children if I couldn’t raise them. It isn’t her responsibility to educate her sisters”
I could feel the anger in my mother’s voice.
I wanted to reach out and hold my mother’s hand and offer some sort of comfort. But I couldn’t because I was clenching my fists. I was that mad at my big sister. We stood by her, we allowed her to follow her dreams. Appa wouldn’t have left us if she had done medicine instead of engineering and now she is telling us we were fools all along? That we should have thought about us when we put our life on pause so she could fulfil her dreams? How can anyone be more selfish than this?
“We will find a way Amma” I spoke knowing very well that there isn’t a way any where. But hope is something you can give in liberal doses without worrying about the cost.
“How Nina? Where am I going to get so much money?”
“I will ask Appa” I spoke without thinking
“Nina, you know You can’t ask Appa”
“Why not?”
“Oh Nina, if you tell Appa that Sally is studying in Bangalore, Then Appa will know that I have moved to Bangalore”
“So?”
“Don’t be stupid Nina”
Amma looked away.
Sometimes words are not needed to be spoken. You can read the message in simple gestures.
George, Bangalore, Amma and Appa couldn’t be placed in the same sentence, let alone in real life. Two is company and three was a crowd and four? and five?

I felt sick thinking of it. Why does Amma do things like this? Why did she come to Bangalore when she knew Appa would never approve it?
It was heartbreaking to realize that, I was stuck in the middle of two people who absolutely hated each other and who will continue to hate each other and will do anything to spite the other person..
Since the time they walked down the church aisle, my parents only goal in life was to teach the other person ‘a lesson’!
ninne njan oru padam padippikkum! That was all they were interested in.

In the midst of all the teachings, they forgot one thing. They forgot that they were playing with the lives of four innocent children. They didn’t notice that the security and foundation offered by a strong family was missing in their children’s life and to them it didn’t matter at all that their children could fall out without the support of a traditional family.
But the sad reality was that this madness would never stop. This teaching lessons to each other is a life long occupation for both my parents

My father has been waiting for one of us to fail, or falter. He was waiting for a chance to prove that his wife was at fault and she failed in her duty as a mother.
And my mother, she was busy trying to prove to my father that he wasn’t a good teacher and that she would do anything that pleased her, even if she knew my father hates it.
I got up from Amma’s bed and went back to the living room. I lifted my pillow and leaned it against the wall.
I wished I was an orphan, like the kids at Mother Theresa’s orphange in Bangalore. The only difference, unlike the orphans who keep wishing for parents, I wished mine would die.
I looked outside my window. The sun was already rising and there was not a single star to be found. I closed my eyes, I could see the constellations in my mind and I wished over and over, I wished on every single star in the sky, that both my parents would die quickly. Only their death would liberate us!