I was 11 and standing in the hallway of my apartment in Block 545. From inside, I heard the horrible sounds of cats being tortured.
The thing is, though, we didn’t own cats.
In a panic, I flung the door open, and I saw my mum sitting in front of her brand-new musical instrument: a table-sized pump organ. It was a harmonium, and it was screeching and bellowing.
Mummy looked up at me and laughed. Genuine happiness radiated from her. Her eyebrows danced and her lips parted; melodious sounds emerged from her belly. I had never seen Mummy look like that. Something was different.
“I have decided that I am going to be the best harmonium player and temple singer in Singapore,” she said.
“But Mummy,” I exclaimed, “you don’t know any music! You cannot sing. Where did you even get that thing?”
She winked at me. “Meeta, my friend from temple, bought a new harmonium. I grabbed the chance to buy her old one. She even came in her car and dropped it off this morning.” Then she raised her chin in defiance. “Cannot? Why not? Just watch me. Everything is possible, Beti, if you believe it in your heart. Whenever I go to the temple, I watch the priests play beautiful music on the harmonium. I feel happy from inside. It was fated when Meeta said she was getting rid of her old harmonium. The universe is showing me the way. Now, go and eat the cheese bread I made for you.”
My mum was 30 years old at the time. She had been a child bride at 16, shipped from Delhi to Singapore, and had lived in a prison of tradition and patriarchal rules. Always silenced. How on earth could she have ever learnt music when she was not allowed to go out, talk on the phone, have friends, work, drive or go anywhere without my father? There was no chance of even getting a music teacher.
As a young girl, I was worried about my mum’s rebellion. I decided that I would keep a close eye on her—so I spied. I was puzzled by the nonsensical diagrams that she scratched in her palm-sized notebook. With intense scrutiny, nose scrunched, she pounded each key on the harmonium, listened intently and repeated the sound. Then she drew more secret diagrams with arrows. This went on for hours. She tried to copy English songs from the radio that blasted in the background. The harmonium bleated these frankentunes.
She practised her music every day after my father went out. She cleaned. She cooked. She prayed. She played on her harmonium. My brother and sister learnt to tune her out. We ignored her request to join her when she practised. We shook our heads and burst out laughing, then we ran for our dear lives.
There was more and more laughter in the house from everyone, it seemed, thanks to Mummy. Absorbed in her self-taught music, she laughed, and it filled the house with calm and peace. Papa was a strict man and he expected all of us to follow his rules, especially Mummy. I recoiled whenever his angry voice boomed through the house—if the TV was loud, for example, or if Mummy disagreed with him. Now, this innocent laughter from her overshadowed the air of dread and smoothed my fears, at least when Papa wasn’t home.
But one day, Papa came home early while Mum was practising. The scowl on his face worried me. I’d known that her rebellion would fetch a price. He thundered in the door and bellowed, “You are wasting your time. You will never be a singer or play that thing. Now go and make my dinner.”
Mum laughed sweetly, so as not to provoke him, and said, “Why not?”
I followed her into the kitchen. She hummed her tunes and swayed her head. She winked at me and—I swear—put extra chilies in Papa’s portion of chicken curry. Then she hugged me and giggled like a teenager. Her quiet laughter reverberated round the apartment and cocooned me. The tension slowly dissolved. I even heard Papa chuckle.
And so this madness from Mummy went on. Music. Laughter. Singing.
Two months later, I came home from school and heard a familiar tune I struggled to place. My mum looked up at me with her smile and said, “I am playing ‘Like Virginia’.” She played the tune again.
Suddenly, it hit me. “You mean, ‘Like a Virgin’? By Madonna?”
My mum threw her head back and sounds of pure joy gurgled from her belly. The red dot on her forehead, between her dancing brown eyes, bobbed up and down. “Yes! The one with the pointy…” Her hands waved around her breasts.
“Muuuuuuuum,” I whined, and danced like Madonna while she played this bizarre Indian version of “Like a Virgin”.
Eventually, Mummy joined the women’s singing group at the temple on Wednesday afternoons. The temple was the only place she was allowed to go alone, and my father dropped her off and picked her up. I heard such raucous laughter and music erupting from these gatherings on the rare occasions that Mummy succeeded in dragging me along with her. The women sat in assorted groups, cross- legged on the carpeted floor, enthusiastically discussing new tunes to play. Some would beat the tablas. Others grabbed finger cymbals. Together, each group created harmonious new hymns. They laughed without worry or censure, safe in their collective space. They clucked like hens when they disliked a new tune. They guffawed in approval when they perfected a tune. Even I picked up the finger cymbals and joined in with the group.
Today, Mummy has sung in temples in Indonesia, India, Australia and Calgary. No one can stop that five-foot-tall woman. With her megawatt smile and infectious laughter, she brazenly invites herself to any temple podium that she can, anywhere in the world. She has even played for the prime minister of Singapore at the Singapore National Theatre!
Growing up in that house, I learnt the meaning of passion. Within the confines of her tradition, Mummy created music and laughter—she created harmony. She permeated the walls with mirth. And as a young girl, I too started to believe in possibilities. I began to learn how to manoeuvre those restricted wings, quietly and covertly. Now I toss my head back and laugh from the depths of my soul whenever I think of my mum.
Because that’s how she now laughs. Eyes twinkling. Cheeks dancing. Unrestrained music that rises to the sky.
Previously published in Understorey Magazine, June 2021, and in What We Inherit: Growing Up Indian.
Kelly Kaur’s novel, Letters to Singapore, was released in May 2022 by Stonehouse Publishing. It was launched in several locations within Canada–Calgary, Regina, Edmonton and Vancouver–as well in Indonesia at the Ubud Writers Festival. Her works have appeared in publications including New Asian Short Stories 2015, The Best Asian Stories 2020, The Best Asian Poetry 2021 & 2022, Landed: Transformative Stories of Canadian Immigrant Women and to let the light in: an anthology. Her work has also appeared at the International Human Rights Art Festival in New York & North Dakota, on the UNESCO Cities of Literature website, and on Blindman Brewing’s Session Stories.
Kelly’s poem, “The Justice of Death”, was awarded Honourable Mention in the 2021 Creators of Justice Literary Award. Her short story, “The Kitchen is Her Home”, was published in the anthology Heart/h, and nominated by publisher Fragmented Voices for 2022’s Pushcart Prize. Kelly was also selected to participate in The Only Question Project (2021).
Her poem “A Singaporean’s Love Affair” and novel Letters to Singapore are going to the moon. The poem will be included in time capsules in the Nova (2022) and Polaris (2023/2024) collections of the Lunar Codex, while the novel will be included in the Polaris collection as well.
