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As the water danced in the vessel, she heard the neighbour’s maid sweep their front yard. In the kitchen, she set herself to make a cup of tea. Mouli shook her head and popped a chilli in the cage. Popat blinked back and cocked his head to one side. It was the first time since that day that she laughed. “ Miss Molly how are you today? Good golly, Miss Molly,” Popat called from behind.

Home to new inhabitants and fruit for all to enjoy. Not deliberately planted, he had thrown his sucked- clean mango stone to the ground and gone off to play. The mango tree, which Satish himself had planted as a child. She wanted to spend as much time here in their house, before it all disappeared. To have a developer build a multi-storied apartment block, where she could have a flat. They suggested putting the house up for sale. They wanted her to come with them, but she declined. Gone back to their homes, to their lives. She wiped them with the end of her sari and placed them inside a drawer. This had happened to her ever since she could remember. Sometimes she saw stars, and everything blacked out for a second. Any sudden or quick movements would make her head spin. Welcoming their first child into her womb. Mouli turned to him, pressing her body to his, welcoming his love. “ Jealous?” Mouli said, trying to ignore his insistent hands. “Miss Molly,” he whispered, kissing her hair. She heard him laugh softly and then he pulled her closer. A tear trickled down her cheek onto the pillow. “Are you upset with me?” He put his arm around her waist and laced his fingers with hers. How could he do this to her? Why was he always teasing her in front of his family? Her sister-in-law’s laughter still echoed in her mind. She turned her back to him as he slipped in beside her. “But Satish is like that only,”she had said. She laughed when she saw Mouli’s present. Her sister-in-law had got a gold necklace from her husband, and she never forgot to mention it at any occasion. On their first anniversary, he bought her a parrot. She was now the ideal good wife, but her nickname stuck. Eating with her fingers became natural to her, just as wearing vermillion on her forehead and praying for her husband’s long life by fasting on Tuesdays. And ever since, he sang that song under his breath as she tackled the fish bones with a knife and fork.īut soon she adjusted to the family ways. She had an Anglo-Indian ayah who taught her to eat the ‘proper’ way. He’d tease her because when they married and she came to this house, forty-one years ago, she proclaimed to her surprised mother-in-law that she could not eat with her fingers. There was a song, his favourite song, Good Golly Miss Molly. It was as if Satish was right beside her. His claws clattered as he fluttered his wings. The parakeet looked at Mouli, and jumped from one foot to the other. She let the birds and neighbourhood urchins gorge on them. She felt such anger that he never got to taste the first mango of that season, she did not bother harvesting them. He had collapsed in the garden, plump mangoes had rolled off his hands into the ditch where the squirrels and crows feasted on them. But he had never done an imitation of Satish before. “ Sweep below the cupboards, no short cuts,” making the poor woman jump. Popat usually did clever imitations of her, and often when the cleaning woman was mopping the floors. Mouli turned and looked at Popat eyeing her cheekily from his cage.

Rise and shine, rise and shine, rise and shine” His glasses were on the dresser as usual. The incessant whir of the fan disorientated her. She clutched her sari to her breast, squinting in the brightness. The neighbour’s son revved his motorbike as the girls from St Agnes College giggled past. Outside the crows bickered in the mango tree. The sun’s rays slanted in through the window, dust motes swirling patterns in the light. Her brain somersaulted from the depths of sleep to make sense of what she had heard. “ Rise and shine, rise and shine, rise and shine” Good Golly Miss Molly by Susmita Bhattacharya