It was my turn to inherit the needle. This was my moment to untangle myself from grief: just for a moment I needed to focus my energy, not on the impending death of my mother, but on the object. Her frail hands looked like parchment paper. Crumpled and brown—tiny little things.
My mother was so large, a woman of so many qualities. Boisterous, temperamental, fiercely intelligent, hesitant to be proven wrong. I found myself imitating her in my early 20s.
She preferred her lipstick a natural hue. Now, I wear a brighter shade of red but I remember at 22, I wore her shirt and a cheaper dupe for her slightly higher priced lipstick. I felt so beautiful, I did not mind imitating, I did not mind being a shadow. I knew my turn would come.
And now, at 40, I wear a bright red lipstick. The men of the family talk “how can she wear this shade to her mother’s deathbed?”
They are fools. My mother lays on her pink pillow, she looks up to me and smiles “my daughter is beautiful”, she mumbles. Her hands are like parchment paper, I hold on to them. Once upon a time, I was a six year old girl on her lap and now the roles are reversed. We take our time to grow, yet it seems like we change our rolls so quickly.
Time rushes through us. We are not static, definitely. But our memories can make it seem like we are.
I help my mother up now, adjust the pillow so she can lay sitting up. “That drawer, Nani”.
I open the drawer she points towards. I am shaking, I need to put grief aside but to do so is like navigating a tiny boat in a turbulent sea.
“I love you,” I say and reach out for the tiny wooden box, handcrafted by my grandmother. “Open it,” her little voice breaks. This is my moment and I take it.
I breathe in
and then I open the box: there it is, the needle.
✳ ✳ ✳
Something lurks in corners, always: sneering, open mouthed men with their teeth ready and bare. These are some of the men of my family; others try very hard not to be like them but still enjoy maintaining their brotherhood. I have found a partner in a man too. He is gentle, soft; he doesn’t hang around by corners with his teeth ready to attack but occasionally I have found him arm in arm with a man who would snide me for wearing my lipstick.
By the pricking of my thumbs….
I have pricked myself on this needle, accidentally perhaps or perhaps it was meant to be.
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. My mother smiles when she sees a tiny drop of blood flow out, a little sarcastically, like she expected this. I press a tissue to my thumb, “it’s not a big deal but I wonder how I did this so quickly? I have only gotten my hands on this needle.”
“It happens more often than you think”. My mother, licks her pointer finger gently and with it smudges a little bit of her kohl that my aunt had applied on her, on this dying woman – of course at my mother’s request. She transfers a hint of the blackness on my cheek.
“कसैको नजर नलागोस्।” —
No gaze shall reach you: often implying not just the lingering eyes of those who wish evil on you but also the ones who gaze at you longingly, ogling. These people with their envy and jealousy waded off by the black mark of kohl, kajal, whatever you call it in your native tongue.
I smile at my mother, the bleeding stops. She looks at me, I look at her. I pine to be a child in her arms again.
Now the moment for putting grief aside is over.
I burst out in tears. My uncles had told me not to cry in front of a dying woman. I do not care what they have to say, I was raised by a woman whose emotions were always colourful and loud.
She cries too.
“I’ll miss you,” I say.
“I’ll miss you too,” she responds.
“I’ll keep the needle safe.”
“I know you will.”
This needle has been in our family for 120 years. A simple embroidery needle. A multipurpose needle. Sew a button, finish off a knitting, embroider a design –
only passed down from mother to daughter, or sometimes from aunt to niece –
sometimes even from mother-in-law to daughter-in-law. A needle of matrilineal importance, and of some seclusive quality.
Our women define what in the family means.
But I must not be hindered by boxes, even the box of womanhood.
My mother passed away that night – I held on to the needle and cried. I did not sleep. Outside, I could hear some men laughing. In the morning they said, “act your age, death is natural.”
I asked my aunt, my mother’s sister-in-law, for the kohl. She gave it to me and said “do use it, too many of us are jealous of you now, too many eyes stare at you.”
Later, I will embroider a flower with that needle. Right now, I carry it in my person always. I do not have my mother’s confidence, these men are less scared of me, and as a result I am afraid of thieves. I hold on to it with my life.
✳ ✳ ✳
I must not be hindered by boxes.
My 15 year old child came to me recently and said that ‘girl’ didn’t really fit their frame. I had managed to mention this to my mother a week before she passed, some other women in my family said “give the needle to someone who is assured of their womanhood.”
I rolled my eyes. I am not assured of anything, I do not have time to engage in such facades. I sat with my child and asked “do you want this needle when I die?”
“I don’t want you to die.”
“But I will.”
They didn’t say anything for a while but then exclaimed “You would be breaking away from tradition by giving it to me for I am not a girl, nor a boy”.
I said, “I have been thinking a lot about gender lately. We can’t really be sure that all the women who have had this needle inherited to them were as confident about their woman box, their womanhood either. We have just always assumed. And now my child, you are confident enough and feel safe enough with me to tell me your truth. I still grapple with it, but I will get over myself. This needle is yours when I die. No gaze shall reach you.” I transferred a bit of my kohl to my child’s cheek.
After the funeral rites and the people coming and going, there was silence. This was when mourning began, I sat on my mother’s favourite chair, I embroidered a flower onto a white cloth.
Magic needle, the men called it – “how come we never get to hold it?”
“Oh, it’s a woman’s domain – the kitchen and the sewing.” They sneered –
“Yes it is.” I mocked them, I laughed at my cousin’s face. The same cousin I keep away from my children. Wicked man. The same cousin who says “our grandmother could not have made the box, it’s woodwork – women do not know how to do that.”
It makes me giggle uncontrollably, and his face goes red. He doesn’t know what I know, he doesn’t know that I was a five year old girl who lingered by her grandmother – like a sunflower turned to the sun. I was there for the entire process, I saw her make the box from scratch.
My cousin has only once caught a glimpse of the finished product.
I laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. And they say “this is a funeral home. Grow up. Stop laughing.”
And then I cry and cry and cry. They cannot deal with my layers and layers of emotions. I can sew them together in one go.
How they create myths around this needle when they are the ones to inherit land and money. This needle is a needle is a needle. Magic because of its history, magic because of its seclusion. We make family, we make traditions.
My mother’s name was Chahana. Desire, longing, wish.
They better lower their gazes.