Tide - 16

Part - 16

The drain in Sanjana's house and was going to take a good few days to be repaired. She along with daughter Tara, had temporarily packed their bags and moved in with Padmaja.

Padmaja is on her bed reading while Tara lies next to her asleep. Padmaja watches the slender frame of her grand-daughter sprawled alongside her own body. She pats down her hair with tenderness. This is the only time of the day when Tara will allow her grand-mother to baby her. “I'm eight years old, paati.”, she would complain wriggling and struggling against any attempt to cuddle her.

Padmaja can hear the television playing in the living room. Sanjana is ironing Tara's school uniform for the next day while humming along to the song playing on tv. It is about a mother's unflinching, unconditional love for her son.

'You starve while you feed me, You have no life outside of me', sings the son to his mother.

She remembers reading somewhere that the actress playing the frail old mother was only a couple of years older than the actor who plays her son.

'You are the god I worship, you are the anchor of my ship'

In another life, she would have taken a hammer to the tv screen and gloated in its destruction. For now, she looks at the gently breathing chest of her grand-daughter, wraps her arms around her and draws her in close.