THE LAST STRAW

Adjusting with a woman with an abnormal trait.

- Savita Singh

Mama has always had a love for other people's possessions. She must have had this trait right from her childhood, but I became aware of it when I was about eight.

You see, her love for other people's possessions does not stop at just that. She, unfortunately, translates it into action. It is not above her to return from a party with a piece of cutlery in her purse, a brand-new lipstick or a perfume.

Not only that, she is an outgoing person, outrageous in speech and in her action. She can swear like a trooper and delights in shocking people by telling risqué jokes in mixed company.

Poor Papa winces every time she opens her mouth, and I suppose he must feel worse every time they return from a party or a visit and she triumphantly produces something belonging to the hostess from the capacious purse which she insists on carrying with her everywhere.

I believe, in the beginning of their marriage, my parents had a lot of rows about this habit of hers. But then, my father, a carrier soldier, just gave up.

You must be wondering why he did not divorce my mom. But in India, where most marriages in their time were arranged, people just did not divorce their wives on matters such as these. He just turned a blind eye to her doings as long as she got away with it, was not caught and did not embarrass him.

In the family, all my aunts, my mother’s sisters, knew about this habit of hers. Whenever we went for a visit to them, they said nothing but made sure to lock up everything they valued safely away from her prying hands.

One of the most embarrassing moments of my life was when one of my best friends told me that just before we went for a visit to her home, one of my aunts had visited them and warned them to lock up anything valuable as her sister was a kleptomaniac and she could not take responsibility for her flicking anything.