Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

New arrival at home
By Aditha Dissanayake
Time’s chariot wheels are catching up on me. I am growing old. I am now, an aunt.
The Old Faithful, Mary, is summoned back from her retirement in Galle. She, who had brought us up, is now more than willing to help my mother and Madsy with the new baby. Mary is filled with old wives’ wisdom. She knows what food is best for Madsy. She knows the right temperature to wash the baby. She knows how to burn camphor in the evenings to ward off evil. And she knows how to annoy me.

“Hinni Nanda is here. Hinni Nanda, Hinni Nanda” she coos to the baby. “I’m the only Nanda she’s got. So, cut the Hinni bit” I tell her. She refuses to listen and begins again “Hitchi Nanda is angry. Hitchi Nanda is angry.” I appeal to my mother. “Ask her to cut the adjectives. I don’t want to be Hinni or Hitchi.” But my mother says that is how I would have been called in our hometown, down south. For a minute I’m glad we are not living in Galle. Being called Nanda is taxing enough in itself.

My niece, hardly bigger than a thimble, still unnamed, still not three months old, yet has the power to summon the entire household to her cot with a volley of “Unga-unga-ungas” at all hours of the day and well into the night. When I come downstairs in the morning for my mug of tea, bleary-eyed and yawning and feeling sorry for Madsy who has been up all night, my mother says, “You used to cry just like that when you were small. She has taken after you.” I don’t believe her of course.

I would never have been so inconsiderate. Not I. When I protest my mother waves me off with a misty faraway look in her eyes. My father ruffles my hair and says, “She is right. The baby reminds me of you.” I leave the new grandmother and grandfather in the land of nostalgia and quickly get back to my room. I feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility taking hold of me. I am now an aunt, ready to sacrifice my entire life to make my baby niece happy.

Like the three Magi who came to see Jesus, visitors flock to look at the baby. They all go “goochy-woochy” when they see her. She talks to them in a language of her own. “Aaaac. Aaawa, aieeeee” They try to match hers without much success. Trying to figure out whom she looks like is a favourite pastime.

She smiles non stop when someone says she looks like Madsy, but cries when being told her nose looks like Rad’s. Who can blame her? Hardly three months old, and already she has changed not only our household but the outside world as well. The postman no longer rings the bell when he goes past our gate, scared he’ll wake the baby. The worker from the Municipal Council, who comes to spray mosquito repellent from a tank, sprays extra liquid around our house so that there will be no mosquitoes to bite the baby. I am so touched, and feel so grateful towards him, till Rad says it’s water that he’s got in his tank.

I want my niece to achieve great things. Conquer the world. Be happy. But right now, I want her to fall asleep. “Just sit by her and talk to her,” says my mother. “Talk what?” “Say anything. She won’t mind. All she needs is to hear your voice.” “I can’t think of anything to say” “Then read to her,” suggests my mother.

I go in search of the books I am supposed to read for my M.Phil. I open Edward Said’s “Orientalism” and begin to read aloud. Before I come to the end of the first chapter my niece is fast asleep. I’m not surprised.

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