Remembering Ma
Splendidly Single
A Husband with a Sense of Humour
The Centrepiece
Grandpa: Of Love, Of Life
Ma was dying and she knew it. She’d been diagnosed with breast cancer and had her first mastectomy at the age of 55. The biopsy report said ‘stage 2-B’, which, I learned later, was a euphemism for ‘stage 3’. Post-secondaries, her second mastectomy happened three years later, and it was then that she sensed that the end was near. It’s more than two years now since she passed away, but she lives in our memory (and the memory of all who knew and loved her) as the embodiment of love, grace, dignity and beauty.
I remember clearly her determined courage when she was diagnosed with the dreaded disease. My sisters and I just went numb – it was too much to take in all of a sudden; but Ma and Dad, working as a team as always, took prompt action, and without getting into the controversies of second opinions and conflicting advice from different sources, opted for immediate surgery and by next evening the diseased organ had been severed away. By that time we had managed to get a grip on ourselves and were concentrating on the task of mentally preparing Ma – and ourselves – for her chemotherapy.
The doctors told us that hers was one of the fastest growing strains of malignancy known to medical science and her chemo medicines were commensurately strong with their equally strong side effects, even apart from the usual debilitation, weight loss, hair fall, etc. They gave her four weeks to recover from surgery before subjecting her to the rigours of chemo. She was up within two, deaf to all protests and admonitions, determined not to be a burden on her two married daughters (or for that matter, on her unmarried one), her sister or her sisters-in law, all of whom had planned to take it in turns to stay with her during her treatment. She spent the next two weeks planning out the running of her home and the hired help, so that there would be the minimum possible disruption in our lives.
This was when we really appreciated the bond between Ma and Dad – the way they synergized their strengths to create a support structure, an almost tangible edifice of love, much stronger than their individual strengths. When her hair fell out overnight, the sight of her beautiful, thick, wavy strands lying in bunches all around her was traumatic, and not just for her. And Dad joked: ‘’You are my true companion, even sharing my increasing baldness,’’ making her laugh, and planning the different kinds of wigs and stylish hats he’d buy her ‘’so that I can have a beautiful wife with a new look every week’’.
I feel blessed in the surety that no matter what, we are always there for each other as a family. Even if we are physically absent, we are with each other in spirit, and not just in the clichéd sense. I can find no better illustration of this than the fact that even though I had to accompany my husband to a job posting in the US, halfway through Ma’s chemotherapy, I would dream of her frequently. And even though everyone back home made it a point not to let me know when her blood reports were not good, or when she developed extensive skin infection during radiotherapy, or when her finger- and toe-tips and nails degenerated as a side-effect of the chemo, I always knew something was wrong because of my dreams.
I returned from US fifteen months later, to find her horribly weakened in body, but indomitable as ever in spirit – making all our favourite pickles, drying herbs for our kitchens by the kilogram (I still have the dried mint and the pickles she made for me), cooking delicacies for us when we went over for our weekly visits. Perhaps her biggest joy at that point of time was spending time with my daughter and my sister’s son, pampering both her grandchildren with their favourite foods, toys, books (though she was as strict with them as she had been with us about standards of behaviour), and most of all, playing with them like a child. Her biggest worry was my youngest sister’s marriage.
At the back of her mind was always this desperate desire to see her happily married and settled in life. In that extremely weakened state too she would draw lists and make us shop for the necessaries of a wedding (in case something materializes I won’t be able to handle everything at once in this state, so it’s better to be prepared). We would protest at the incessant demands she made on herself; she’d always say: ’’I want to leave behind pleasant memories. I want you to remember your mother as a positive figure, not as a sick, querulous, weak old woman. Besides, all this activity keeps my mind off my body’s ills’’.
And then came the second big shock. After two false alarms (minor tumours that turned out benign, but which nevertheless had to be surgically removed), she was diagnosed with secondary malignancy in her other breast a little more than three years after the first mastectomy. I had gone with her to collect the report, fully expecting a third false alarm, and read the word ‘malignant’ in the report in a daze, looking at it again and again, willing the whole thing to be just a nightmare. Ma took one look at my face and twitched the report out of my hand.
‘’It’s nothing,’’ I said, hastily pulling myself together. ‘’Yes, I can see that on your face,’’ she said. After she had been examined by the oncologist and the date for pre-operative tests fixed, she said thoughtfully, ‘’I know I won’t live to see your sister’s marriage’’. Cutting short my protest, she continued, ‘’I don’t think I have much more to give you all. I just hope the end comes before I become a total burden. But promise me something: there should be no lack at your sister’s wedding. And just look after your father as best as you can. Fortunately, he is a very peaceful soul, but he’s going to be very lonely. Leaving him alone is going to be the hardest part of dying for me,’’ she finally broke down.
Nine months later, she was gone. She battled her cancer bravely to the end. The last month in hospital, with the malignancy rapidly spreading to her bones, and then her liver, ravaged her body, but could not daunt her spirit. She would receive all her visitors with a smile and joke with them, tamping down on the intolerable pain which ultimately necessitated morphia patches. Ten days before her demise, she insisted on celebrating Dad’s birthday in hospital, distributing sweets among the doctors, nurses and the paramedical staff.
During her final week, when smiling and banter became physically impossible, she gracefully declined to have visitors in her room. She was most peaceful when Dad was at her side. And that is how she finally died, looking at Dad. Even now, when faced with any problem, it is of her that I think, and as in life, she never fails me.
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Splendidly Single!
(Chicken Soup for the Single Soul)
‘For the last time, Mom, I’m not going to the wedding with you!’
Must be involved with someone …,’ some other gossip monger would whisper in scandalized tones. And I would be barred by my upbringing from telling them that if I were involved with someone, I’m sure my parents would support me.
Suddenly remembering a cousin in a parallel situation, I ring her up quietly and ask: ‘Are you coming to the wedding?’
‘As if Mom would let me skip it’, she retorts, ‘even though I utterly loathe all this, and I’m dead on my feet!’
‘Same here,’ I reply gloomily, ‘but hey, it won’t be so bad if you’re there too … we can always sneak away into a corner’. I hang up, somewhat cheered.
Duly presenting myself to mom in said saree and jewellery, I’m instructed to ‘hold myself up and smile pleasantly, for God’s sake!’
SMILE PLEASANTLY!!! I’m not scowling or making faces, or anything … so why am I expected to simper? We reach the venue and are greeted with: ‘Oh! Welcome! So glad you could come … and bitiya (daughter) too … are you very tired?’
‘No, aunty,’ I lie through gritted teeth. We move away.
‘See? I told you to smile, but you have sworn never to listen to your mother.’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake, mom … look! I’m smiling! Okay?’
My eyes search frantically for my fellow sufferer. I finally spot her, trying to be invisible between a pedestal fan and a potted plant. I excuse myself and head for her, followed by Mom’s instructions to ‘mingle, and not hide myself in a corner’.
My cousin sees me and hails me with relief, and we thankfully slink away into a corner where there are two chairs and no relatives! Bliss!
‘Did anyone comment on how tired you are looking?’ I ask.
‘What d’you think? It’s their stock-in-trade’ she replies. ‘So many people here look more tired than us, but they’ll pick on us because they want to imply that as independent career women heading towards spinsterhood, we must be fading blossoms, and that’s why we look perpetually tired’.
‘Hey, you’re exaggerating! It’s not as bad as that… it’s just the way they are,’ I say pacifically.
‘Then tell me, why don’t they comment on the exhausted looks of our male cousins?’ she asks.
‘Maybe they do?’ I say. She laughs derisively.
And, as if on cue, my grandmother’s sister and her daughter pass by:
‘Ma, bhabhi’s son looks really tired; he must have come straight from office … poor boy! And uncle’s grandsons too look exhausted … well, what can you expect on a weekday? The poor things have come directly from work and haven’t had the time to freshen up’. I look significantly at my cousin.
And then, in the next breath … ‘Oh Ma! Just look at those two madams … totally off-colour! Well, what do you expect! Growing older by the day, and not married yet … obviously the bloom of youth is on its way out! Poor things!’
‘Let them be’, I sigh, holding my cousin back, as she starts from her chair, presumably to tell them off. ‘Just let them be’.
‘You’re right’, she says, calming down. ‘Let’s go eat … I saw some wonderful kulfi!’
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A Husband with a Sense of Humor
published in ‘Chicken Soup for the Indian Couples’ Soul
The wedding marquee resonated with laughter and the light-hearted chatter of friends and relatives. There were bright colours, glittering lights, music —all the paraphernalia of an upper middle-class Indian wedding. Decked in a green and red tissue saree and solid family jewels, with my hair cascading down my back in perfect waves, I had already received numerous compliments. I was, after all, the newest bride in the family, at least for a few more hours, till the cousin whose wedding we were attending actually got married! But all of this I registered mechanically, moving and smiling like an automaton.
I had been operating on ‘auto mode’ for the last sixteen months —ever since my father-in-law had expired, within six months of my marriage, after battling secondary blood cancer. The atmosphere at home was, understandably, one of depression, morbidity and perpetual gloom. My husband, an only son with two older, married sisters, had become seriously hypertensive and I had developed a major hormonal imbalance, not least because of the traditional Indian society’s concept of ‘unlucky marriage’ and ‘jinxed bride’. While no one actually said it to my face (being a highly educated family), the innuendo was thick enough in the air to stifle both my husband and me.
“You know, usually if you were getting your only son married you would expect to lead a peaceful, restful life,” would say sundry distant relatives and visitors with spurious sympathy, ”but it’s all a matter of luck, after all … “ or, ”some brides bring such good fortune to their families, while some others ….”. And since nothing was said by the immediate family, or in so many words, I could not even refute the innuendos — my father-in-law had been diagnosed with cancer long before I had arrived on the family scene; and in any case, even if that hadn’t been the case, how was I to blame?
Today, twelve years later, I realize in the light of life’s experiences, that people rarely behave rationally, gracefully, or sensibly when devastated by grief. At that time, however, my husband, that most loving and considerate of spouses, seemed to have turned completely away from me, leaving me to flounder in a maze of hostility and unexpressed recriminations. I was forcing myself to get through the days of my life one day at a time, clinging blindly to the tenet that marriage was for keeps. Married as I was, to a suddenly closed, repressed stranger who was torn between conflicting loyalties, I was at my wits’ end, trying to cope with a situation that showed no signs of improving.
So here I was, at this cousin’s wedding, trying to locate my husband who seemed to have gone into hiding, when I was hailed by another cousin’s wife. Two older cousins and their wives had cornered my husband, and were now sitting in a group and calling me to join them. This was the first time since my own marriage that we were attending a family function. The cousins and their wives started joking and bantering, irresistibly drawing us into their repartee. I blossomed like a parched plant in the shower of their affectionate treatment, and after some time, my husband’s permanent frown too started lightening. The jokes and puns flowed along with the soft drinks and the hors de oeuvres, and before long, my husband was smiling after almost two years.
Suddenly, the mother of the groom came along, looking for her younger son who was in charge of the arrangements. This usually reserved young boy had let down his hair for once, and his revelry with his college friends since the early evening had attracted plenty of ribald comments from all his cousins.
”Where is my Chhotu?“ Aunt asked our group anxiously, ”Have you seen him?”
The oldest cousin replied soothingly, ”Must be around somewhere …”
”Probably unconscious under a bush somewhere,” struck in the other mischievously.
”WHAT?”
”Yeah … he was drinking rather heavily when we saw him last …”
”NO! He never drinks!”
We were all struggling not to laugh, because the youngster in question was a hundred yards away, taking care of everything. His distracted mother, however, had not spotted him yet.
“Oh! What mothers don’t know about their kids…,” sighed the older cousin’s wife, casting up her eyes piously.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Aunt angrily, “Chhotu is not like that …” She rounded on my husband, the most serious one in the group, “You tell me! Was he really drinking?”
“Yes Aunty,” said my husband with a straight face. “I saw with my own eyes—four bottles of beer … neat!”
“NEAT?” she shrieked, past reason now, and tottered off, calling out to him. We all collapsed with laughter, clutching our sides, as she spotted the poor boy and started ranting at him, while he tried to make sense of the whole thing.
“Neat beer!” spluttered a cousin’s wife, helpless with mirth … “Oh Lord!”
I looked at my convulsed husband with new eyes. Was this the hedgehog I’d been living with all this time? For the first time I saw light at the end of the tunnel; the joy and the laughter was there, buried underneath the debris of the upheaval in the family. Time and patience would be needed to bring it to the surface, but for the first time, I perceived something to hold on to.
Needless to say, it took nearly seven years, punctuated by such helpful efforts from these and some other, dear members in the extended family, for him to emerge from his mental solitary confinement. It was, indeed, an uphill path full of potholes of tears, heartbreak and misunderstandings, that had to be paved over with patience, understanding, and above all, faith. Today, by the grace of God, there is plenty of joy and laughter in our lives. Problems do crop up, but are no longer able to cow us down for long … and all because of that one incident, that gave me hope, and the faith to hold on, and believe in the most important relationship of my life.
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THE CENTERPIECE
Published in chicken Soup for the Indian Couples’ Soul
My tears hadn’t abated when the bridal car stopped outside my new home at five in the morning. My husband, Ashish, squeezed my hand comfortingly as I tried to stop crying. ‘Weeping brides are totally passé,’ I’d been warned by friends and sisters—wasted advice for someone who cries and giggles at the drop of a hat. Anyhow, I managed to check the flow, wanting to start my ‘new life’ as a bashful bride, and not a weepy one.
As per Indian tradition, my mother-in-law had come home from the wedding function before the actual ceremony to prepare for her son and daughter-in-law’s entry into the home as a couple for the first time, and was supposed to be waiting at the door with the ceremonial thali etc.
The minutes ticked away—no mother-in-law! Murmurs from within: ‘someone call her … ‘; ‘she’s just coming … she’s woken up but is in the loo …’ It transpired that mother-in-law had come home and promptly gone to sleep on a sofa in the drawing room!
A few minutes later, she came stumbling out groggily, opened the car door, threw a chain around my neck (without a collar or lead, mercifully), led me into the house and plonked me in front of the thapa (the spot where the prenuptial ceremonies had been conducted) to complete the post-marriage rituals.
Whispers from sundry relatives in the background: ‘What about the welcome rituals on the threshold? Where is the ceremonial thali?’ ‘She didn’t ask anyone to prepare it’ … ‘but there were so many of you … someone should have taken care of it!’ … ‘you know how she is … who would dare to move a twig in her house without her consent? And she just came home and went off to sleep!’ …
The rituals done, I was taken to ‘my room’ and told to have a bath and change out of my wedding lehnga for yet more ceremonies, after which I would be able to get some sleep. I waited for the giggling female relatives (mostly from the ancestral village) to leave the room, but they seemed transfixed by my lehnga, which was, indeed magnificent, besides being extremely heavy and stifling me in the mid-June heat of Delhi. It turned out they expected me to strip right there and go for my bath since we were all ‘girls together’! Thankfully, a Delhi Aunt came to the rescue, shooing them out to give me some privacy.
After more ceremonies I was allowed to return to my room to rest, only to find that mother-in-law had followed me there and had no intention of leaving. She plonked herself in the centre of the bed and adjured me to ‘go to sleep’. It took me a few moments to realize that for some reason she was determined to stand sentinel over me (guarding my slumbers?). I was not left long in ignorance of her true intent. For, this was the time when everyone in the house—family as well as guests—were settling down to a few hours of pre-lunch rest after their hectic night and morning of wedding ceremonies: time when Ashish would come to ‘our room’; when she would finally have to relinquish her only son and youngest child to ‘the girl from outside’!
Other relatives seemed to have gotten her drift as well. They kept calling to her, asking her something or the other, trying to lure her out of the room on various pretexts. But she was more than a match for them. Like the Rock of Gibraltar, she simply refused to budge, however much they tried. And each time Ashish entered the room to rest, she would shoo him away and tell him to go, sleep somewhere else. After five abortive attempts to lie down in his own room, Ashish finally turned to leave, when a helpful and outspoken uncle pushed him right back in and told mother-in-law, in so many words, to come out of the room. Mother-in-law left reluctantly, but having sent uncle away, was back in a trice, resuming sentry duty in the centre of our wedding bed!
I was feeling more and more as if I was in the middle of a farce. I was just wondering what would happen next, when she yawned widely: ‘I’m sooo.. sleepy,’ she murmured, and lay down in the middle of our bed and promptly went to sleep!
Both Ashish and I stared at her in shock, as did other relatives who had returned to drag her out of our room again!
Ashish and I looked at each other across her, and I suddenly burst out giggling at the absurdity of it all! Relieved, he too started smiling, and we decided to grab some much needed sleep—with our hands interlinked above mother-in-law’s oblivious head! Of course, we let go hurriedly as soon as she started stirring awake, but I think she saw, because she left us in peace after lunch.
That was not the end of it, however. She continued to monitor our movements jealously (and does so to this day, more than thirteen years later). On one hand she would throw hysterical fits every time our bedroom door was locked, and on the other, started creating scenes about ‘barren women’ when I did not conceive our daughter until two years after marriage!
However, after the initial few years of fraught situations and minor skirmishes, Ashish and I have worked out our equilibrium—we manage to largely ignore her hysterical antics, striking some sort of balance between taking care of her and not letting her vitiate our lives with her would-be vicious behavior. As they say: ‘Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly’ … by the grace of God, we manage to treat these situations lightly and get on with the business of living a fulfilling life!
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Grandpa: Of Love and Life
Grandpa was finally conscious after a week of concussion. Distressingly independent at ninety six, he had been ambling gently around the house when he stumbled and fell, hurt his head and lost consciousness. His speech was still a little slurred, but despite occasional bouts of delirium, he was clear-headed most of the time. His body, however, already wracked by old age and Parkinson’s Disease, had succumbed. The presence of male nursing attendants round the clock irked his free spirit, but he no longer had a choice in the matter.
‘How are you, child?’ he asked as soon as I entered his room with Rajesh.
‘Shouldn’t I be asking you that Grandpa?’
‘See? I beat you to it!’ His eyes shone with glee.
‘How can he joke like this when he’s in so much pain?’ Rajesh asked dumbfounded, as Grandpa and I exchanged mischievous looks and chuckled.
‘That’s the way he is,’ I replied tenderly, ‘And that’s what he’s taught us too: always to come up smiling, with a joke on your lips, no matter what’.
He passed away within three months of this, but I like to think that his dauntless spirit lives on in all his grandchildren.
My first clear memory with Grandpa is at the age of five. My male cousins had ganged up and were teasing me mercilessly, and I had fled to Grandpa. Ensconced in the sanctuary of his arms, I told him, between sobs, what had happened.
‘So … they called you a donkey … hmmm!’
I waited breathlessly for my tormentors to be called to book. But his next words completely threw me: ‘Where are your big, floppy ears? Where’s your tail?’
‘What do you mean Grandpa?’
‘I mean darling, that you haven’t really become a donkey. So why do you cry if some fools don’t know the difference between a beautiful little girl and a donkey? The Almighty has given you plenty of brains. So, think of a reply instead of crying when someone is unkind to you … crying will neither solve anything, nor give you any satisfaction!’
That gave me to think, and that lesson has remained with me to this day. Grandpa’s point of view was peculiarly his own. Left motherless among seven brothers at a tender age, with a father who became a workaholic, Grandpa was a consummate survivor.
He was a storehouse of knowledge and wisdom for all his grandchildren – the best Montessori school a child ever had. Showering us with unconditional love, he gave us a legacy of life-skills and mind-development exercises in the form of stories, idioms, conundrums, games, couplets and conjuring tricks – all done in such a way as to capture our imagination. His reminiscences about the Partition of the country in 1947 and the family’s transition to India, with my three year-old father in tow and an aunt on the way, were verbal manuals in survival skills and attitudes.
‘Whatever losses you sustain in life, always remember, you are not defeated until you choose to be’, he would say. ‘You can always rebuild what you have lost, the way we did after the carnage of the Partition, if you have your family and your health’.
Years later, working for a reputed newspaper, I found myself in hot water when my old boss changed jobs and the new boss, as usually happens, wished to clear away the old team and bring in his ‘own people’. I was an extra-special target since my niche was coveted by his personal protegee. Harassed in numerous intangible, petty ways, I was initially tempted to fling the job in his teeth – I did not really need the money. Besides, with my Master’s degree in Economics I’d been offered a plum job in Equity Research, which I had declined because of my love for writing.
However, Grandpa’s genes inside me would not let me bow to injustice. Being the granddaughter of Grandpa – the one who had left everything behind in Lahore, and starting over in Delhi in the face of prejudice against ‘refugees’ at the age of thirty four, had risen to the post of CEO at Tata Oil Mills – I refused to be hounded out of a job I loved and did well, and held my ground in the teeth of overt hostility for six whole months, at the end of which period the boss simply gave up and let me get on with my work! All through this time Grandpa was a pillar of strength for me, keeping my spirits up whenever the stress of the situation got to me.
We learned Chess from him, as well as Bridge, the ancient Chaupar, and a host of card games and conjuring tricks. To this day, I ascribe my ability to think situations through exhaustively and take sensible action to my grounding in Chess and Bridge under him. All of his grandchildren – my cousins, sisters and I – would clear all aptitude tests that came our way with little or no preparation, thanks to our childhood spent answering his puzzles and conundrums.
His immense love and joy in his family made us all feel cherished and precious, and gave us a core of self-confidence and security. It was never too late for him to accompany us to the market to buy something we had forgotten, and which we dreaded telling our parents about. It never, ever crossed his mind to refuse when his three year-old youngest grand-daughter demanded that he stop watching the Sunday movie on television and play with her in the garden. I am told he once rang up from Bombay (as it was then) when I was four, to ask my parents to switch on the radio, since my favourite song from ‘Bobby’ was playing on AIR!
In his later years he suffered increasing loss of hearing, blurred vision due to a spoiled cataract surgery, and the progressive tremors and phases of forgetfulness of Parkinson’s Disease, but never, till his demise at the age of ninety six, did we ever see him defeated in spirit.
It’s no wonder then, that the least demonstrative of my cousins – a notoriously taciturn person – was moved to write his first ever personal post on Facebook upon Grandpa’s demise: ‘Remembering my Grandfather — one of the few people who inspired me’!
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At Random 