Today after school I had to take Little Po to his music class. I was told to drop him off at the entrance and that he’d make his way to the class . I was to wait down for him till he returned an hour later .
But it was a dark gloomy monsoon afternoon and it was his first day . I wanted to see for myself where this room was deep inside the large, imposing building .
We pushed open the large doors to a huge cavernous lobby that literally gobbled up Little Po as we walked on the purple musty pile carpet .
We got into a lift and made our way to the third floor. The industrial looking vestibule with cement floors and cold unadorned walls had no markings apart from a sign in red saying ‘Restricted Access’ .
Did we have to march ahead or turn right ?
There was no one to ask. Looking around helplessly , we suddenly saw someone approach and I ask where we had to go . No answer – just a finger pointing reluctantly, the other way.
As we walked down the cold corridors I was spooked . The silence was chilling . We walked down the poorly lit shadowless corridors in dead silence . On one side were dusty panels with strange looking objects peering out – contorted statuettes, broken trophies and aluminium trunks with names of people piled one on top of the other. And the last bit of corridor was lined with half empty bookshelves from some abandoned mansion or library. Occasionally we saw a surly looking east European or person of indefinite descent . Man or woman was hard to differentiate – big , burly and as mentioned before surly. They looked at you with slitty eyes , questioning but not willing to show you the way .
Heavy, grey metal double doors – the first hard to pull open and the second even harder to push in . No indication of what was going on inside, or what will go on when you leave your little boy alone inside .
I go down yet another corridor and I find a young girl sprawled on the floor amidst sheets of music . Her hair is long, straight and silky, she is slim but hardly waif like with her huge feet and clunky sandals. I’m scared to leave my boy alone with her in the room . She asks us to wait . We were too early she said . Exactly a minute before four, she brings along four more children. Each one looks terrified. Not a smile . No hello .
A man with colourless slitty eyes came out from a closed door saying ‘Don’t, Don’t’ to a young boy who was trying to shut the door behind him . He held a heavy headed drumstick in his hand as he led the boy in …….
And I remembered the plate I’d seen on a table at the beginning of the corridor – a half eaten meal covered with piece of crumpled tin foil and a piece of bone poking out.
Riverside It was a quiet early morning sunrise when we immersed my mother’s ashes in the river.
It was exactly a week ago that my brother and his wife went along with a friend to immerse my mother’s ashes.
As per our belief the body is cremated and the ashes immersed in a body of flowing water on the third day after the demise.
My mother passed away on Sunday evening after a brief illness that had no cure ( Glioblastomultiforme) . The minute she found out that her time was near, she decided to live it up. She had never had a pill in her life except for the occasional paracetamol or analgesic which is quite inevitable if one lives to 89 and was determined not to spend her remaining days visiting doctors’ clinics or downing medications to no real use.
The temple
A few miles outside Pune, on the steps leading to the river they silently said a few prayers and tipped the ashes. Within minutes a lifetime just vanished back into nature.
A second life
My mother’s credo in life was always to make the most of what life gave you. Of course she grumbled and whined and even cried because she had her frustrations and disappointments too. But she always faced life squarely and faced every adversity with undying optimism that this too shall pass.
I first noticed this quality when fifty years ago, she met with a motor accident. We were walking to a temple close by as it was my 21st birthday. Though not regular temple goers, my mother thought I should begin my official adulthood with the blessings of the Almighty.
So we set off early in the morning to beat the traffic and we had hardly gone a few hundred yards down the main road when she was mowed down by a passing car.
It was a young girl, barely eighteen who was learning how to drive. After banging into my mum who was lifted onto the bonnet, she pressed the accelerator instead of the brakes and I saw my mum tumbling under the car and dragged underneath for a good twenty feet. Seeing her thrashing legs suddenly come to a halt with the car was something I’ll never forget. I stopped screaming and watched as she somehow extricated herself and sat beside the car. By this time a crowd had gathered but my mother ignored them and asked me to get a taxi, take down the details of the car and driver and take her home .
She also asked to wrap her sari around her arms which lay limp against her side and grab her mangalsutra and her wallet that were thrown off.
As we drove home, she told me to inform my brother, put off the gas, inform my neighbour and ask him to help my brother lodge a police complaint.
On our way to the hospital, she insisted on being treated by a particular surgeon who was a friend of my father, to look into her case. She got out of the car and sat on the stretcher that whisked her away to the Emergency room.
Miraculously she had only fractured all her ribs, a clavicle and her wrist. Her left arm was dislocated and she had a crack in her hip . Considering the accident , I was surprised that that was all the damage she had suffered.
She was hospitalised for three months and had three more months of rigorous Physio therapy that included hot wax baths and exercises to restore her muscle strength.
During her hospital stay, she set an exam paper for her school leaving students and even corrected the papers, writing comments with her left hand.
My brother and I visited her every day as did my father. And she had a tonne of visitors. So she insisted being properly dressed with perfume and lipstick and even had me run up some printed gowns. Every evening it was a party of sorts during Visiting Hours in the broad hospital verandah overlooking the sea. She regaled every visitor with the story of her accident and often had to comfort those who had come to meet her! She was quite sure that she would be as good as new. And even when she came home with her arm in a sling, she insisted on sending a home cooked meal everyday to a friend who was being operated for a brain tumour .
Always ready for a party
My mum was always ready for a party – even two friends who came to dinner or lunch became a ‘party’ for her. And she loved to try new foods. For a girl who was raised vegetarian, she took to fish and fowl without any squeamishness and mastered cuisines that she had never heard of. Many of our daily conversations centred around food.
Enthusiastic to ‘celebrate’, our birthdays were always special. She not only made us our favourite food but also made sure that we had new clothes, toys or whatever. On her last birthday we spent the whole day shopping and window shopping.
Clothes were her undying passion and there was a time when I came home from school to a new dress everyday! She was of course doing sewing lessons at that time and enjoyed using her electric Singer machine.
Another of her passions was fashion. She couldn’t walk past a shop without buying something. Even if she didn’t need it. “The shop keeper was so nice,” she’d say in her defence when we chided her for always coming home with something – whether it was fresh vegetables or an expensive sari.
Meticulous and particular to the last she made me write her obituary months in advance and even wanted to be dressed to the nines for her Final Journey.
But just as she was fond of collecting things, she was equally careful of how she used her things. I remember her putting away her ‘party’ cutlery in their original boxes right till ten years ago. Her crockery survived several moves even though it was packed solely by her, in newspaper and kept in wooden crates. Till as late as last week, I spotted a plate from a dinner set that she received as a first wedding anniversary present.
When she discovered that her time was limited, she began sorting out her stuff . She got her saris laundered, some of her jewellery mended. And she gave away the things she loved most to the people she held dear.
My parents were married for 67 years and I always thought my mum would outlive my father especially since he had had a heart attack five years ago.
But she had her own reasons for leaving him behind and she left that Sunday evening happy that she had lived a rich and fruitful life.
So goodbye dear Mummy. Hope you’re making lemonade out there somewhere with all the lemons you’ve been squeezing !
Twenty- five Seven 