Find Me a Word That Means Love

Neither of us were yakkers. So, endless afternoons were spent in that easy silence, where I binged on Word Search Puzzles. The thick, blunt point of my pencil hovered over letters that could be set into elliptical rings as I learnt new words and whooped over the ones I already knew, fishing them out of the alphabetical maze that seemed like life’s biggest bamboozle for a 10-year-old on summer vacation.

I was at a crossroads that summer as far as reading was concerned. Secretly, I judged classmates who had succumbed to gorging on and giggling about Sweet Valley High. Not so secretly, I had pledged my devotion to Nancy Drew for life and even found out about an institute in Indore (later revealed to be dubious or non-existent) that taught collegians how to become teen detectives.

But that summer, mum was immersed in Shivaji Sawant’s epic Mrityunjaya, a tome whose name I could barely pronounce or scarcely begin to comprehend. But it had felt silly to sit there rooting for Ned Nickerson, shining gloriously from a paperback, when I knew a few feet away this Karna chap from Mahabharata was in the midst of turmoil (which I gauged from my mother’s expression). The passages, I later learnt, were one of the grandest soliloquies ever written in Marathi.

Of course, I told none of this to mum who would’ve laughed off the intimidation I felt from the hardcover she was flipping with the lightness that adults seemed to be good at. But I knew I needed something more challenging than identifying with Bess Marvin’s character to match that massive magnum opus. Crosswords were a tad too tough. So, I chose the word puzzles.

Her eyes would swiftly scan the clues when my pencil stopped looping the letters. She would gently let on cryptic tips – but never the answers – and give me all the time to figure it out from there. I’d gleaned that her giveaways, accompanied by a smiling “Arre!”, meant the word was embedded diagonally – the toughest to scan – and she offered not even a nudging monosyllabic inkling if it was a straightforward horizontal, unmissable answer. And she would pack me off to the World Book dictionaries if I was badly mangling the pronunciations. But, mostly, she would urge me to get on with it, and do it all by myself as one afternoon merged into next, one week blended into another.

Whether it was one page solved or a dozen, 5 pm was the day’s treat – aam panna concoction stocked to last the summer, or chilled milk with a drop of the favourite flavouring essence, or fresh, whisk-churned lassi or a thick mango milkshake that needed the scooping spoon more than the straw to thulp.

The tall glass would be topped with my taller claims of progressively becoming a genius at word games. Her smile was amused, not indulgent. Kids in the neighbourhood were scaling all sorts of heights in the meantime – an arangetram in the not-so-distant future, turning into pottery wheel whizzes or sure-shot Class VII scholarship winners, learning elementary French at Alliance or becoming Sanskrit shloka narrators.

And here I was – circling words day in, day out, from a square full of random letters. Mum believed vacations were also a two-month break from ambition. So, three weeks into this, a second Word Search Puzzle book had fetched up.

I would learn about the 15 shades of blue, 10 of Napolean’s battles, a dozen dormant volcanoes and names of a score of vegetables. Closest she came to helping me out with an answer was when she told me since I’d found an eggplant in the word maze, I needn’t keep looking for brinjal. I think she’d been exhausted from the household chores that mid-evening, so the day’s treat would be Rasna, a not-so-posh but insta coolant. Sometimes, even mothers got visibly tired.

Two decades-and-a-half on, I am spending summer afternoons at home at a stretch after years. Mother’s more tired than that Rasna afternoon many blazing summers ago, and it’s mostly tender coconut water and flavoured Electral – or Tang, on days when the other two get too monotonous – at 5 pm now. The doctor says they will neutralise the medicines better and help in hydration.

But on days when the spine doesn’t send out shooting pain, she meticulously files out pages from Marathi dailies that have crosswords, and her assured pen scurries along, scribbling in answers onto empty squares, rarely hovering in doubt or irresolution. She breathes deeply when she’s stuck on a cryptic clue and I am tempted to rush and read and offer the answer – if I know – on a platter, helping her fill up all the blank spaces interspersed between the dark cubes of a crossword. But I know I shouldn’t, so I try doing the grown-up thing of allowing her to figure it out on her own.

I know my dad envies her the elegant handwriting and the speed with which she gets through a bunch of crosswords in a single afternoon, and there’s a spring in his step if he’s helped her with the one last answer that might have eluded her. Sometimes, even a lifetime’s not enough to know for sure that you’ve really managed to impress someone.

She carefully folds the single broadsheet and keeps them in a file – another rough day negotiated by immersing herself in this play of words. It could be the simplest of crosswords, but I know it assures her that her brain’s still ticking as sharp as ever, that she can solve mysteries that the crossword-maker has woven into the 10×10 check-board riddle.

After that summer a long time ago, I’d hardly stayed put at home – trekking and biking and sneaking out for star-gazing sleepovers and bonding with buddies. There was always more to learn outdoors, newer people to meet, and to forge a career out of the burning embers of ambitions.

I’d forgotten what it was to sit and solve word puzzles with mum. How you could complete a jigsaw and feel elated and content in the wonderful world of words. Confined to the house because the medicines drain her of all strength, she can, perhaps, sit and pen a brilliant book on her recipes. Or translate Sahir Ludhianvi or Raja Mehdi Ali Khan into beautiful English prose, like only she can.

But it’s a rare summer vacation for my homemaker mother. And for that beautifully relaxed summer 25 years ago, when she spared me from being packed off to coaching classes for Class VII scholarships or cookery classes that would make me an expert at baking croissants, I think I should just let her enjoy her crosswords.

For when the summer vacation ended, I had to go back to school and start the next academic year.

For my mum, when the brief 10-day spell of respite from the two dozen medicines ends, she has to go back to her next chemo cycle.

Deulkar is a Pune-based writer.