Daaarling! Father musters his romantic self and tries to wake up his half-asleep wife. He tentatively places his palms around her face, and says with a big silly smile, Happy Anniversary! In response, Maa half opens her eyes, conjures a scowl, removes his hands away, and turns to the other side, clearly sending the message that she isn’t interested in his melodrama.

‘Happy Anniversary Maa!’ Ten-year-old me gives her a tight hug. So, what is the plan today?

‘What plan? Continue to burn in this hell till Yamraj takes me. I don’t know why doesn’t he come for me?’ I maintain a serious look to make Maa feel that I am on her side.

‘Daarling! This is how it is with us. Fight and then make up over and over again. Our hell is like heaven.’ Father makes a sheepish attempt to pacify Maa with another silly smile at which I roll my eyes and check if Maa’s expression is softening.

‘Look at that crooked smile. He feels no shame for how he has destroyed my life.’ Maa retorts taking an angry sip of her anniversary morning tea. It would take a couple of more cringe attempts by Father but I know we are going out today. It is drizzling outside as it invariably does this day almost every year.

A couple of hours later, we all get ready to go out for lunch and a movie. Maa wears a soft yellow tant cotton saree with a red border and pairs it with a red sleeveless blouse. Father wears a drycleaned blue shirt and a black trouser. ‘Ei! Come here.’ Maa calls me to help her straighten the pleats of her saree. ‘Darling! Why are you calling him? I am here! Your beloved husband! I will help you. Tell me. Should I hold it here?’ Covering my mouth, I giggle at another comic attempt by Father to win back his wife. ‘See how he is acting and you are laughing.’ Maa continues her effort to remain angry but has now significantly mellowed since morning.

We go to a Chinese restaurant in Hauz Khas where we have been going for several years now. We always go there when we want to have Chinese. We order soup, chicken spring rolls, egg fried rice and chicken Manchurian. After a hearty meal, we go for a movie at a theatre in Nehru Place.  Father had already purchased tickets for the matinee show the previous evening while returning from work. It is raining as we come out of the theatre after the movie. We stop at a stall to have tea while we talk about the movie. I couldn’t stop thinking how sexy the lead actress was. Then we return home. I watch TV while Maa takes Father back in time for a detailed discussion and condemnation of what happened this fateful day eleven years ago, the days leading up to that day and the days, weeks, and years that have followed that day. After two hours or so, we go to sleep. Last two weeks were not good but today was a good day. Order had been restored. I go to school next day without a somber look.

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Next year, same day, my father attempts to wish his wife their twelfth anniversary. But he fails to win her this time. We don’t go out that day. Maa doesn’t speak to Father all day just like she hadn’t the whole month before. While cooking there are bursts of her ranting about what happened this fateful day twelve years ago, the days leading up to that day and the days, weeks, and years that have followed that day. Lunch and dinner are eaten in silence. Father throws away the movie tickets he had bought the previous day and goes for a walk in the evening. I pretend to read and study all day. It was a bad day. Next day I go to school carrying my school bag filled with five tons of rock.

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In most years, two to four weeks before the anniversary, Maa would invariably access that memory partition which stored all her resentment with her life. That memory partition was designed to increase in size on its own without addition of extra chips to store additional resentment accumulating with each passing year. Not that she never accessed that partition during the rest of the year. But anniversary time was a not to be missed time to access the data stored there. Leading up to the anniversary day, I would spend my days analyzing how Father was performing in his brave attempts in cajoling Maa before the D-day and how the graph of Maa’s anger was moving in real time. By nine or ten years of age, I always knew the day before if we will eventually go out or not on D-day. There were also a few years, when somehow Maa forgot to access her resentment data, and the day would go well or we even went on trips to celebrate the day.

The good days were more or less like the one described earlier. A morning ritual of making up, then going out for lunch and a movie. Coming back home and peaceful trips into the past to reminisce what happened during this fateful time all those years ago. By twelve or thirteen, I knew everything by heart. After all, events in the past will not change no matter how many times you repeat the story. There were gifts as well. Imitation jewelry, gold earrings, ruby necklace, sarees, sandals, Walkman, mobile phone. Temporary bandages over festering wounds. As the bandages washed away a couple of days later, the pus would ooze out.

On bad days, a suffocating silence invaded the empty spaces and consumed everything. Angry, frustrated trips into the past to reminisce what happened during this fateful time all those years ago and what followed and how all of it should never have happened. There is something about bad memories. While the events remain the same, the resentment keeps growing with each moment in the passage of time. Particularly, if there are not enough good memories to replace them with. Like with a rotting wound, where the bacteria keep multiplying, infecting the whole body. As more years pass, fatigue and resignation set in, and you stop trying to put bandages. You unwillingly live with the wound only covering it outside the confines of home to avoid pretentious concern. You stop caring when flies hover around it. You don’t have the stamina anymore to whoosh them away.

Over the decades, Maa never stopped repeating how had it not been for me, she would have left Father long ago. How if only she was fortunate enough to be a working woman, she would have left him long ago. But Maa would have never left Father just like Father would have never left Maa no matter how much they suffered. They were simple, conscientious individuals with middle class values and no great desires and ambitions. Once their respective families brought them together and they took those rounds around fire, they believed that it was their duty to build a life together and live it no matter what happens along the way. It was not romantic love that kept them together. They both had nowhere else to go and didn’t know how to live by themselves. After a point, the events during a particular time decades ago, rights and wrongs that followed, bad decisions and their consequences, curses and negative energies accumulated over decades don’t matter. Living together is the only way.

As I look back, the good days have only been slightly more than the bad days. Should I be grateful for that as the therapists would say? Duh! Whatever was the alignment of the planets, my parents were destined to come together and live a life filled with lifelong anger, despair, frustration, loneliness, hopelessness, and an ever-present wish for Yamraj to visit them and it to be all over. A life also filled with several joyous vacations, good food, good clothes, making fun of each other, staying together during storms, and an incorrigible child who grew up spending most of his time observing and analyzing their expressions, words, body language, bitterness and resignation. He always knew if and when it was going to rain.

During times when I access my own resentment data piled up over the years, I wonder which day makes me question my life more – my parents’ anniversary or my birthday, as the former event led to the latter. But that is for another day. Today, Father’s hopeful efforts to win his wife failed. We didn’t go out.