Dr. Anamika Nath is a forensic medicine faculty member, poet, author and researcher. She loves to write about ordinary moments.
Minutes
by Anamika Nath
There were two kinds of knocks my mother gave. The first was for neighbors. Three quick taps with the tips of her fingers, followed by a cheerful, “Sister, are you home?” The second was for houses where someone had ignored her for too long.
Those knocks were firmer and patient. She never stopped after the first attempt. She would wait, listen for movement inside, and then knock again. The village knew those knocks—from pregnant women to mothers of children who had missed their vaccinations to old men who quietly stopped taking their blood pressure tablets.
My mother carried a blue canvas bag with the words “ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist)” printed in fading white letters. By the time I was old enough to read them, the stitching had begun to loosen around the straps. Every year the government supplied a new register. The bag remained the same.
As a child, I believed the bag contained medicines. It did, a little.
There were strips of iron tablets, packets of oral rehydrating solution, pregnancy test kits wrapped in plastic, vaccination cards folded into impossible shapes, referral slips, pens that seldom worked, and a steel water bottle dented near the cap.
But mostly it carried names. Every morning, my mother left home carrying other people’s names. She remembered due dates better than birthdays. She knew which newborn had not gained enough weight, which diabetic grandfather had hidden his sweets inside a biscuit tin, which woman would pretend she wasn’t home because she was afraid of another lecture about delivering at the hospital instead of with the traditional birth attendant.
Even though she forgot where she had kept her own spectacles, she never forgot who needed a second visit.
When I was ten, I thought all mothers knew every child in the village. Only later did I realize most of them barely had time to know their own.
Our house stood at the edge of the village, where the tar road gave up and dissolved into mud each monsoon. Before sunrise she swept the courtyard, washed yesterday’s utensils, packed my school lunch, watered the sacred basil plant, and left with the blue bag hanging from one shoulder.
She walked everywhere. By afternoon the hem of her sari would be dusted white in winter, splashed brown in the rains, powdered red in summer. When she returned, she always washed her feet before entering the house. Then she would ask me the same question.
“Did you eat?”
Never, “How was school?” Just, “Did you eat?”
If I said yes, she smiled and disappeared into the kitchen.
I don’t remember her sitting down immediately after coming home. There was always something already waiting for her before she reached it.
*
One evening, while returning from school, I found her standing in the courtyard of our neighbor’s house. Half the women from the lane had already gathered there. The new bride had brought with her a mixer grinder. The young lady was demonstrating it proudly, feeding handfuls of soaked rice into the steel jar. The machine roared to life. Within moments she lifted the lid and showed everyone the smooth batter inside.
The women admired the shine of the jars. Someone asked the price. Another asked where it had been bought.
My mother asked only one question.
“How much less time did it take from traditional mortar grinding?”
The bride laughed.
“Twenty minutes, maybe.”
Mother nodded once, confirming something only she had been calculating. Then we walked home. She didn’t speak for the rest of the way.
*
That evening, while she washed the rice, I stood beside her. “Are we buying one?”
She looked up. “A mixer?”
I nodded.
She rinsed the rice once more before pouring away the cloudy water. “Not now.”
“Why?”
“It still works.”
“What?”
She tapped the stone grinding slab leaning against the wall. “That.”
I looked at the black stone, smooth in the middle from years of use. Every Sunday she crouched over it, crushing ginger, garlic and green chilies with a heavy stone roller. By the time she finished, her knees always cracked when she stood up.
“It takes forever,” I said.
“It gets done.”
That was the end of the conversation.
The next Sunday, she was back at the grinding stone. She never complained. She hummed. Sometimes old Assamese songs she had learned from the women she worked with. Sometimes hymns she couldn’t quite remember. If she forgot the words, she continued with the tune. The grinding stone answered in its own rhythm, stone against stone, wet spice against granite, morning after morning.
*
The first thing my mother replaced was not the grinding stone. It was the kerosene stove. The gas connection came after three years of saving. The delivery men carried the cylinder into our kitchen while half the neighborhood watched from the courtyard. Mother signed a paper she read twice before putting down her thumbprint.
That evening she cooked rice on the new stove. She didn’t call anyone to admire the blue flame. She simply served dinner earlier than usual.
Father looked at the clock. “We’re eating already?”
Mother shrugged. “The rice cooked fast.”
Father laughed. “So now you’ll have time to rest.”
She smiled without answering. After dinner she washed the utensils. Then she folded the clothes drying on the bamboo line. Then she sat with my mathematics notebook. Nothing about her routine changed except that dinner had arrived forty minutes earlier.
*
A week later, she visited three houses to convince expectant mothers to deliver at the district hospital. When she returned, she looked exhausted.
Father said, “You should sit.”
“I will.”
Instead she watered the spinach patch. Then she bathed. Then she packed the iron tablets for the next day’s visits into small newspaper packets. Only after everything else was done did she sit. By then, it was almost bedtime.
*
One Sunday afternoon, while she was oiling my hair, I asked, “If gas cooks faster, why do you still wake up at four?” She divided my hair neatly with the comb.
“Because the morning is still the same length.”
I thought that was a strange answer. Adults often said things that sounded wise only because children weren’t expected to question them. I let it go.
*
The first thing my mother ever bought on installments was a pressure cooker. It arrived wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper, the aluminum shining too brightly for our smoke-dark kitchen. She washed it twice before using it, turning it over in her hands as though looking for a flaw.
Father circled it once and said, “It looks expensive and whistles too much.”
“It will stop.”
The first whistle startled everyone except Mother. She was already rinsing coriander leaves at the sink. For weeks afterwards, the neighbors joked that they could set their clocks by our cooker. Every evening it sang at almost the same time. Mother never laughed with them. She would lower the flame, wipe the kitchen counter, fill the drinking-water vessels, wash two or three plates that had somehow appeared in the sink, and by the time the cooker fell silent, dinner was ready.
Nothing seemed different. Only the evenings became a little longer. Father lingered over the newspaper. I finished my homework before the power went out. Even our old mongrel learned that the first whistle meant he could wander into the courtyard because scraps would soon arrive.
One Saturday, while Mother was at work, I tried lifting the pressure cooker. It was heavier than it looked. When she came home, she found me struggling with it.
“You’ll drop it.”
“I wanted to see.”
“What?”
“Why you like it so much.”
She smiled, took it from my hands, and placed it back on the stove.
“It’s only a cooker.”
That evening she left before dawn to accompany a woman in labor to the civil hospital. The ambulance had broken down halfway, so the driver borrowed a jeep from a tea garden. Mother returned after sunset with dried mud up to her calves and a plastic packet of sweets someone had pressed into her hand.
“The baby’s fine?” Father asked.
She nodded. “A girl.” She washed her hands, changed her clothes, and went straight into the kitchen.
“The rice is already washed,” Father said. “I’ll cook today.”
She shook her head. “It’ll be quicker.”
Father didn’t argue. He rarely did when she spoke like that.
While the cooker hissed, she opened her register at the dining table—births, immunizations, expected deliveries, follow-up visits. Every page was filled with dates written in careful blue ink.
She frowned at one name. The next morning she left earlier than usual. That evening I heard from the neighbor that the woman hadn’t gone to the hospital after all. She had waited. Mother went back the next day and the day after that. On the fourth day, she returned smiling.
“They finally agreed,” she told Father while removing her slippers.
That was all. I never found out who they were, only that Mother considered four visits easier than one funeral.
*
A month later, another appliance appeared in the village. This time it belonged to the headmaster’s wife: a washing machine. All the women gathered in their courtyard. Mother stood quietly at the back. They admired the color, touched the buttons.
Mother waited until everyone had finished speaking. Then she asked, “How much less for one load than hand wash?”
The headmaster’s wife looked at the instruction booklet.
“Thirty-five minutes for one load.”
That evening she washed our clothes by hand, beating Father’s shirts against the smooth stone by the well until dusk settled over the bamboo grove.
*
By the time I reached Class XI, Mother had stopped asking about my marks. Teachers already sent word if I did badly. Instead she asked practical questions.
“Did you carry your umbrella?”
“What time is your practical tomorrow?”
She liked questions that had definite answers. Perhaps that was why she enjoyed forms so much.
Our dining table disappeared every few months beneath piles of scholarship applications, caste certificates, income certificates, hostel forms and photocopies of mark sheets. Mother checked every page against the original before placing them in separate plastic folders.
“If one paper is missing,” she said, “they’ll send you back.”
I groaned. “It’s only one paper.”
She looked at me over her glasses. “It’s one more trip.”
*
The next morning she took leave from work and travelled with me to the district headquarters. The queue outside the office had already curled around the building. People complained about the heat. Some argued about whose turn it was. Mother stood quietly, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. When our turn finally came, the clerk glanced through the file and asked for another photocopy of my Aadhaar card. Without a word, Mother opened her cloth bag. The photocopy was already there. On the bus home, she unfolded the receipt and tucked it inside the folder.
“You knew he’d ask?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then why did you carry it?”
She smiled. “They usually do.”
A few months later, my admission letter arrived—a nursing college in Guwahati. The whole village celebrated. Mother cooked rice pudding. Father bought sweets from the market. Neighbors came and went until late evening. Only Mother slipped away after dinner.
I found her in the courtyard, washing the pressure cooker. “You’ve washed it already.”
“It dried with starch.”
“It can wait till morning.”
She ran her fingers around the rim before turning it upside down to dry. “So can many things.”
*
The week before I left, she became strangely interested in the market. She stopped before an induction stove, asked the shopkeeper to switch it on. Timed how long it took for the pan to heat. The next shop sold mixer grinders. She asked the same question she always did. “How long?”
The salesman launched into a speech about the motor, the warranty and the discount. Mother listened politely. When he finished, she repeated, “To grind coconut.”
“Two minutes.”
She thanked him and walked away. “You aren’t buying it?” I asked.
“Not today.”
She said it without disappointment, as though she had only come to collect an answer.
*
On my last evening at home, she packed my trolley bag—two uniforms, three bed-sheets, a mosquito net, steel plates, and our pressure cooker. In another was the new mixer grinder, not even unboxed. Mother gifted me the one we saw in the shop. I opened it and smiled. Mother folded the instruction booklets and tucked it inside the bagpack. It took both of us to sit on the trolley bag before the zipper would meet. She said I will waste less time with these machines and focus on studying more.
*
Hostel life introduced me to a different kind of clock—the bell for breakfast, attendance or the library closing. Study hours that stretched past midnight. Soon I stopped measuring my days by mornings and evenings. I measured them by shifts.
Mother called every Sunday from the booth. The conversations rarely lasted more than five minutes.
“Have you eaten?”
“Yes.”
“Are your uniforms washed?”
“Yes.”
“Any fever?”
“No.”
“How are your classes?”
“Busy.”
There was always a pause before she asked the last question. “When are you coming home?”
I would pull the phone away from my ear and look at the duty roster pinned beside my bed.
“Not this month.”
“Hmm.”
“Next month, maybe.”
“Hmm.”
“There’s too much work and I have very less time in hand.”
“I know.”
She never asked me to come anyway.
*
After graduation I stayed in Guwahati. The hospital offered me a job. The shifts became longer. Some weeks I worked nights and some weeks I forgot what day it was. Mother never complained if I missed a Sunday call. She simply called the following Sunday. If I didn’t answer then either, she tried again the next week. Sometimes I called back while walking between wards.
“Ma, I’ll call properly later.”
“You’re working?”
“Hmm.”
“Go.”
“I only have five minutes.”
“Five minutes are enough.”
They never were. Someone would ask for a file. A patient would deteriorate. A consultant would appear.
“I have to go.”
“Go.”
The line would disconnect before either of us said goodbye.
*
I had to come home urgently after mother’s demise. The house became quiet in practical ways. Neighbors came for thirteen days. Someone took away the borrowed chairs. The medicines were sorted into two piles. The blue ASHA bag was handed over to the woman who had been appointed in Mother’s place. Father fell asleep in the afternoons. There were always cups to wash after visitors left, always someone asking whether we had eaten.
On the fourth day, I entered the kitchen because the silence there felt different. Everything was where it had always been. The mark of the pressure cooker sat on the lower shelf, the box of the mixer grinder stood beside it.
I opened the cupboard looking for tea leaves. There was a notebook where Mother put her calculations about how much less time would it take for each work if done by machines.
I smiled without knowing why. The kettle took longer than I expected to boil. Almost without thinking, I reached for the mixer jar to crush the ginger. The one lying at my rented house now.
The sound echoed in my mind through the empty house. For a moment I waited for Mother to call from the courtyard. “Switch it off properly.” Only the ceiling fan and the rain beginning outside.
My phone vibrated. A colleague.
“Can you come back a day early? We’re short-staffed.”
“I’ll let you know.”
After I hung up, I sat on the kitchen stool for a long time.
Rainwater dripped from the edge of the roof into the old aluminum bucket Mother had always placed there before the monsoon.
I remembered another phone call. I had been walking between two wards.
“Ma?”
“Hmm.”
“I can’t come this month.”
“I know.”
“Time is less these days.”
“I know.”
“I’ll come when things settle down.”
“They will.”
“I’ll talk properly on next Sunday.”
“Go and finish your work.”
“I’ll call.”
“You do that.”
The line had gone dead before I realized she hadn’t asked when I was coming home.
I opened my contacts. Her name was still there. My thumb rested on it.
Outside, the pressure cooker whistled once in the neighbor’s kitchen. Someone, somewhere, had managed to make dinner a little earlier. The rain fell harder.
I sat in my mother’s kitchen until the tea turned cold.
Copyright 2026 by Anamika Nath