I’m aboard a ship. A rust bucket to be more precise. A vessel that creaks to high glory. Down here in the ship’s dimly lit dining hall, a Madonna crooning from the lonely speaker nudged in a crevice, her tunes remind me of a while bygone. Dinner is served, and the meal is a lonely affair. Some mashed potatoes and a sauce whose colour and name I can’t discern to save my life.
A few moments later, the sous-chef joins me. She asks “How is the food?” and before I could answer, she says “You can be honest about it. I only blanched the vegetables and the head chef has already snoozed off in the throes of his extra glass of rum.” Since honesty is the order of the hour, I say “The potatoes are bland, but in a comforting manner. I’m not much of a spice person anyway.” Quickly she replies “That’s why you have barely touched the gravy!” We both laugh at this and she brings out, to my surprise, a bottle of Merlot. A few glasses later, she starts telling me something.
She doesn’t have a name. Or rather, the closest to a name she has is a nickname called “Boulder”. No, it wasn’t either of her parents. It was her girlfriend. Her name is Samsa. And before I attempt to draw any conclusions, she clears the air by saying “My story isn’t Kafka-esque even in the remotest manner!”. The girlfriend is almost an ex. They have been together for decades. Then one fine day, she wants to have a baby. A few arguments later, Boulder caves in and ten months later, the baby is born. Her name is Tinna.
Once Tinna is born, the grammar of their relationship changes. Tinna consumes Samsa’s existence and while the physical transformation has been endured by Samsa, the Gregor of our story in a way is the relationship between Boulder and Samsa.
At this juncture, Boulder asks me “What do you think? Should we have become parents or should I have put up a stronger force of resistance?” As someone who has only been a child and never a parent, I felt like I was in no position to answer. But, I had to bring something to the table, if nothing then at least for an extra glass of that delicious Merlot.
So, fishing for answers I went. My choice of pond was my parents’ marriage. It was arranged and like most arranged marriages, both barely knew what they were getting into. The marriage was undoubtedly a disaster. While surviving for twenty years under the roof with two children in tow, every alternate conversation was an argument. The classic case. One parent being present while one being absent. The absent parent trying their best to shun any responsibility pertaining to the children while the present parent striking arguments about why the absent parent is being so… absent.
Returning back to the conversation at hand, with something resembling an answer in my tow, I say “I had a present parent and an absent parent. But in my eyes, both were not ready to become parents. But in my parents’ case, even after twenty years, they barely knew each other. So, this answer in turn provokes a question, how and why does a person have a child with someone they barely know?”
Boulder replies in a stern manner “Instead of answering my question, you are bringing quandaries of your own to the table!”
My reply being “That’s what stories do. They spark quandaries that until then laid dormant in the darkest recesses of one’s mind.”
The ship with Boulder in it was in a book I was reading and my conversation with Boulder was my reading between the lines. That’s what great literature does. It compels you to read between “your” lines, have a dialogue with the characters while drawing parallels with your own existence. Boulder by Eva Baltasar, in a lean span of 112 pages, achieves that and much more.