George Menezes

When I ask a young woman staying down the road a simple question like “how are you my dear” I invariably get an answer “I’m good” (more…)

For quite some time now people seem to be asking me the same question.

“What are you doing these days? “ It is quite different from being asked “what are you doing now?” If I wanted to be funny, which I some times do, I would have said “Well right now I am talking to you” or I would like to have said “you mean right now, well I am doing nothing. Did you have something on your mind?”

“Well not really, but we could have a drink or something” he might say

“Bandra Gym?” I would say quickly not letting on that I was not a member and he would have to foot the bill.

Oh yes I realize that people have read the obituaries and think that I am kind of “foot loose and fancy free” as some Casanova described himself.

But this is hardly the way to describe my situation or condition. It dents my self esteem. It really does.

In fact I am far from “foot loose”. If at all, I am foot tight. I have cramps in my muscles and stiffness in my joints. And as for “fancy free”, I would like people to know that I still get paid for the fantasy that creeps into the stuff I write. Small amounts, sometimes paid in postage stamps, but certainly not free.

A few years ago I used to be addressed as Uncle. “How’s your writing doing uncle?” Or “Still traveling to Goa uncle on your Consultancy assignments?”

I could spend hours together standing on paver blocks on the pavements or outside the Church after Mass waxing eloquent on both the questions.

Does becoming a widower change everything so drastically? For me no doubt.

Living alone, nobody to talk to, no raised voices, no laughter, no tears, no smashing of crockery, no bringing up the past, nobody whom people would ask “How’s the old man?”

Above all no caring for the most beautiful woman in the world. The most patient under pain. The least complaining, the most resigned to the Lords call, no rushing off in your shorts at midnight to the Hospital carrying a dying woman in your arms. Month after month, several times in the same month. Waiting for five hours, four times a week while a dialysis machine embraced my loved one in its steel and plastic embrace?

Yes being a widower has changed life drastically for me but, praise God, it has not severely dented my fitness of body and mind and surely not affected people I meet at the fish market or at the various “take-aways” that are Bandra’s special benediction.

So why are the questions I am greeted with so differently worded than in the past?

Is it different for widows I wonder? Has it got to do with age or the quality of the Botox treatment you have had?

There is an 80 year widow I know who can set a floor on fire with her dancing. I am sure a male friend does not say to her “What are you doing these days?” He would say (if her name is Phil) “Fill my cup of joy, can I take you to the Senior Citizens Dance this Saturday?”

But now I know why widows are not asked questions like am asked as if there was nothing I could do that was meaningful in my fossilized state.

Widows have a Union. If I had not attempted to write this piece I would have never have discovered it. It is called “Hope and Life Movement”. And as we all know Unions create bonding, solidarity and strength and can descend upon you like bees whose hives have been disturbed

I remember seeing a man once long ago sitting on the lawns of a Club eating toast and marmalade with his cuppa “chai” Every now and then he was swatting flies that tried to reach the marmalade.

Out of curiosity I went up to him and said “How come you swat and kill flies that disturb you but ignore the bee that is hovering over your head?” And the man replied “the flies come singly and I can deal with them. If I were to swat one bee the whole hive would descend upon me”

I cannot imagine anyone daring to ask a unionized widow the silly questions they ask me.

And if you want to know, men are not admitted to the Hope and Life Movement

I must see our Archbishop and see if I can organize a Movement for widowers.
Must find a good name for it.

Next time somebody asks me “What are you doing these days?” I can smile and say “I am trying to bring hope and life to widowers. And some movement. Most of them look pretty constipated”

I am 100 years old, or so I feel, sitting on the banks of the River Mandovi. Not far from my ancestral home on the island of Divar. In Malar to be more exact.
I’m sitting where the old sluice gate or “manos” used to be. And I’m confused about where it has disappeared. At my age I get terribly confused. Maybe it has got to do with something about Goa and liberation that everyone is talking about. (more…)

Some things catch up with you no matter how fast you attempt to run. (more…)