I could smelled the ghee even before i reached the gate.
It was past midnight the Singh haveli, should have been - asleep but maa ko kaun roke.
( But how do I stop maa for staying up this late)
The staff already went back to their quarters. The garden lights on their timer, low and amber along the pathways. The old house settling into itself the way old houses do, creaking gently like a ship at anchor, all its daytime personality folded away.
But the kitchen window was still lit.I stood at the gate for a moment after the car pulled away and looked at that window. That warm, stubborn, completely predictable rectangle reflection of light still untouched,
I almost smiled.
Almost.
This place, our home - an ancestral haveli belongs to my dada , -
Devrath Pratap Singh.
A man true to his words never failed to fulfill all his duties and does what necessarily required for the people.
The strong pillar of our family, he did get retired from business but never fails to contribute when it's needed, dadu has a different way of showing love. He and dadi are our sovereign.
They together build this haveli from scratch when they had nothing worked day and night ,build this legacy which later transfer to papa and chachaji and now me .
Aryanman- (mera bhai chachaji ka beta )is still finishing up his studies and would later join me in business.
The upper floor belongs to dadu and dadi where most of the days dadi sits behind one of the jharokha and watch the garden glow, always this courtyard with the tulsi plant sown my her own hand ,in the centre that has been watered every single morning before she did anything else, before chai, before prayer even touched her lips pehle tulsi ki puja , rudra beta everything else can wait.
I walked through the courtyard,past the tulsi. Through the inner door and stood in the corridor for a moment to breathe in the smell of ghee and that particular spices maa use in her food with so much love and care .
I could hear the small musical clatter of a spoon against a steel pot from the kitchen.
Behind all this standing behind the stove -
Mrs. Savitri Devi Singh my maa- and she was every syllable of that name, carried it the way Rajputa women of her generation carried everything, with a straight back and complete composure and absolutely zero tolerance for nonsense from anyone including God - was flipping parathas that less of food and more like blessings .
I still couldn't understand how she can measure all those spices in her palm so perfectly and every single time her palm knew things recipes didn't.
She did not turn around when i came in.
"Beta," she said. Sit.
"Maa-"
"Pehle baith. Phir baat."
I sat because arguing is pointless when your opponent is maa.
.
.
.
.
.
This was the only room in the world where Rudradev Pratap Singh sat when he was told to sit. He had spent years understanding this about himself and had arrived at a complete peace with it. Some things simply were meant to be.
Like how the sun rose every morning without any fail or the monsoon rains. He sat in his mother's kitchen.
She brought the milk , parathas and set it in front of him,-and looked at him.She looked the way she always looked at this hour in this kitchen - softer than daytime, her hair loose from its daytime bun, the lines of her face that he had memorised so completely he could have drawn them in the dark. she was the most formidable person he knew and right now she looked at her son the way she had looked at him since he was a boy - like he was still the most important thing she'd built.
"Khaana?" she asked.
Maaa...
Itna late bete-
Meeting thi..
She made a sound. Not agreement, not disagreement - a distinctly maternal sound that communicated clearly that eating this late was a category of activity she never liked
"Kaisi thi meeting?" she asked.
"Theek thi."Hamesha theek hi hoti hai." Always fine.
His tone carrying the gentle, years-long observation that her son described everything as fine and she had learned to read the variations in his fine the way a musician reads notes - each one slightly different, each one telling her something the word itself didn't.
Tonight's fine was tired. She noted this but said nothing about it.
They sat in the warm kitchen. The milk cooled slightly in front of him. He picked it up and drank because she had made it and she was watching and there was no version of this interaction where he didn't drink it.
The old clock in the drawing room marking the quarter hour. The tulsi rustling in whatever small wind found its way into the courtyard at this hour.
Rudra," she said.
"Haan, Maa."
This was her about-to-say-something posture - he'd known it his whole life, the slight squaring of her already straight shoulders, the particular quality of attention that came into her face.
Aur kitna kaam karega beta thoda theherav bhi tho zaroori h jeevan m...
Aap yahi kehti hain hamesha."
"Kyunki yeh hamesha sach hota hai."
He looked at her.She looked back - steady, unhurried, the way she had always been.
Jeevan m hum sabko ko kaam karna chahiye aur hum karte h bhi aur m manti bhi hu ki insaan ko kam se jude rakna usse apne aap se bande rakhta h ...
Dekh bete m yeh nhi keheti ki tu bas kal se kaam kaj chor de par bete jitna jeevan m kaam zaroori h utna hi jeevan k baki saare hisse bhi tho zaroori h...
Yeh ghar pariwar inka bhi tho koi mahatwa hota h na bete..
Maa..
Bete mujhe bhi tho taseeli honi chahiye na ki koi mere bete k saath h ,jo uska iss pariwar dhyan rakhti jo usse mujhe bhi zyada pyarr karti ho ...
Maa humne kitni baar iss bare m baat ki ...
Haa tho kya tune na kehe diya aur m sun lu ??
Jaise tu meri sari baatein sunta h ...
Par maa..
Par varr kuch nhi mera bhi tho mann h ki m apni bahu ko dekhu usse batein karu , apne potential potiyo dekhu....
Maa ki baatein sunke rudra ki hassi nikal padegi....
"Maa."
"Yeh jawab nahi hai.
"Mujhe kisi ki zaroorat nahi-"
"Zaroorat."
She repeated the word and turned it over like something she was examining.
"Zaroorat beta, main tujhse zaroorat ki baat nahi kar rahi." She leaned forward slightly. "Main tujhse - chahna ki baat kar rahi hoon. Kisi ko chahna. Koi jo tujhe chahe. Koi jo tere liye intezaar kare ,koi jo yeh darwaza khud khole - Her eyes on him, quiet and absolute. "Koi jiske liye tu ghar aane mein jaldi kare."
The words landed somewhere inside him and stayed longer than intended.
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Love....♥️
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