Consider the Relevance of an Answer Without a Question
By Mandira Pattnaik
Consider our damp apartment, per capita income of India, its clueless weather—we never really know if it is going to be sweltering heat, whether the wind is going to get poached under the Jamun tree, or will we slowly wick wetted to rains.
Consider fermented fate, for I fuss and worry, while Dad is ill and lying in bed staring at the Weeping Fig beyond the tiny window.
Consider our burdened bodies, our colonized background, our back-of-beyond land, our bitter-sweet relevance, our causeless baggage, for I am wondering if he’s still cold although he’s under two blankets and it isn’t even proper winter, we’ve had only three days’ worth of woollens—so why am I bothering?
Consider ceaseless caregiving, consider fallacy the moment I speak—half to myself, half to the heavens—Is it winter yet, and hear his quick retort in a drowsy voice, No!
Consider bourgeoise bluebirds, reticent rains, followed by showgirl showers endowing the tree with spring-colored leaves, all of which embolden me to start a conversation with Dad: Don’t you remember how Mum and you went for a swim every time it drizzled, when you two were still together — but he shoots me shut with: She never liked swimming, don’t mention her, didn’t I say that before?
I don’t feel hurt, just numb, and a bit dumb, a bit transformed too, so I curse the tree, the birds and the puddles and wish them away, dreaming that night that someone chopped the Weeping Fig tree off, but wake up to more rains—like the drops want me to cry, so I do, drowning my sobs in the loud pitter-patter, but when it is sunny again, and Dad and I are out on a walk, his steps labored, speech alternating between funny and weird and annoying, I hear him mumble something about his failing memory, aching joints and the lovely white landscape in Kashmir when he was living his best life there as a miserably underpaid geologist, leaving me wondering what makes him think of snow walking in this weather, given the doctor has given him max six weeks—his chemo has failed—but I avoid asking him and I hear him respond anyway to an imagined question I might’ve asked him: No, no, no—I’m not tired yet.
Mandira Pattnaik’s work appears in Wigleaf Top 50 mainlist (2023,2025). Her flash also appears in Best Microfiction (2024) and BSF Anthologies (2021,2024). Mandira is the author of eight published/forthcoming collections, including "Glass/Fire" (2024), "Girls Who Don't Cry" (2023) and "Where We Set Our Easel" (2023).
