They are hollow hearts sunk in. There are just too many of them. When I look around myself and my house, sometimes I find them fidgeting against the windows. Sometimes, they try to adjust in visibly concealed corners. On other days, they arrive snuggled in boxes as misunderstood gestures of affection. On most days, they make up by performing as frozen statues of memory. The everyday lives of mugs coincides with mine through both appropriate and inappropriate utilities.
When guests arrive bin bataye, I look for combinations of them. Ma said it “doesn’t look nice” if you serve chai – coffee in different mugs. They should match. But often when it is just all of us at home, we drink in the kind of mugs whose narratives spill in inconsistent directions. I choose the one with the sunset painted on it. It has a swan sculpted on it in a manner that it wants to fly away. The slender neck of the swan is the handle with which I hold on to the mug. If held too tightly, the neck will crack and the swan will never get to fly. I often wonder how we nurture and rupture dreams delicately. My brother chooses the one that changes colours. If he is drinking a chilled slurpy milkshake, the mug is blue. If it is warm chocolat-y BournVita, the mug is amber. His personhood however is not as transparent. You or I can never know what complain he will make next. That is the paradox of changing colours. It always means what it doesn’t mean. My father has used the same one ever since I’ve known him. There’s an invisible line that denotes how much quantity the mug should hold. Whenever Ma crosses that line, there’s only so much temper he can hold. For Ma, her mug is a chhuti. There are waves running against the mug, the handle of the mug always about to drown. But when Ma places her fingers around the mug, it reminds me of pictures of my feet silently whispering to the beach. Her fingers are always chiseling at my feet, telling me how to walk. Who am I kidding? There can never be a chhuti for mothers. The bell rings, “di-ding!”, someone is here to see my father. She is asked to serve chai. Her chhuti of chai fades into labour. I am asked to look for combinations of mugs. Guests won’t stay long enough to share fragmented realities.
When the guests leave, Reeta Didi is asked to take care of the mugs. But she is never trusted with them. Whenever she wants chai, she doesn’t get to choose. We’ve already kept a mug aside for the chronicle of her life. Some people can have their own lives, but some lives have to be shared, lived like jugaad. Reeta Didi shares her mugs with so many. With Bimla Didi, and with all the never ending number of men who come in to repair this house. Some of these mugs have a doctor’s tape running all over the handle. They seem fractured. It amuses me how sometimes Reeta Didi, Bimla Didi and all the men whose names I’ve been told not to ask hold the house together, prevent it from fracturing. They assemble and arrange the furniture, fix the pipes, water the plants, clean the dustbins. Their mugs get piled up, each holding the other. Strangely, all of them are different, but they look at me with the same disdain.
I am eyeing my brother. He is eyeing the box wrapped in a flimsy sheet of gold. Ma can tell from the look of the box that it contains mugs. But my brother doesn’t know, doesn’t want to believe her. He hasn’t yet opened too many of them to know without seeing. So his fingers move haphazardly, tearing at the wrapping paper with a vengeance that is impatient. But it yields nothing. He is staring at two indigo mugs. He looks at Ma. She says, “It is Neha’s birthday party na next week? Gift them to her!” Sometimes I wonder about the homelessness of mugs that are gifted. They are awkward gestures. It must take naivety to trust someone with an object so delicate, it could crack everywhere. It must also take love. My brother just yawns in response.
On the other end of the room, there are books waiting. I see authors upon authors whispering with the slow breath of flipping pages. A mug imprinted with a photo of my family sits in close association, holding difficult conversations. “Why didn’t they ask Evans?”, “N or M?”, “How to Kill a Mockingbird?”, “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, “What was I scared of?”, “Who Moved My cheese?” Often, I have seen them reach out to the mug to look for answers. It holds instruments like pencils, pens, erasers, sharpners – all the tools to indulge in personal and impersonal gapshap and tête-à-tête. To stay close to answers, but also remain distant from them. Amidst the muddled utterances of questions and answers, the covers of the books often fall and rise like the gasp of the human heart. On some days, this rise and fall of sunsets and sunrises gauges the motion of time. With this, the mug sheltering the pencils, pens, erasers and sharpeners painted with a picture of my family inscribes their skin with wrinkles. Perhaps, some mugs make wisdom a habit.
Wisdom tends to till memory. The same way soil is tilled before it is ready to yield more. The mug sitting on the other end of the table is a throne crowned with a cactus. With its mere existence, the cactus commands solitude both for itself and the mug. I was taught the most suited plant for a desert with its arid, grainy and runny soil is a cactus. I would like to think of this soil as malleable, not falling under any category of control. I was also taught that mugs are made of clayey soil. I would like to think of this soil as malleable, not falling under any category of control. As a young girl of six, I would use Funskool’s play doh to mould my future self in a manner that they could be seen, touched and felt. Like all the other and same girls in class, the first image of self we formed was that of a spoon. This spoon was followed by a crowd of vicious plots. There were saucers, plates, spatula, a stove, kettles, forks, knives, and mugs leading to a kitchen. With this mug, last night, I formed my latest image of self that you cannot touch and feel, but only see and read. It holds a thorny cactus.