A son remembers

“You dog, all your shorts are torn” went her singsong to me as I would
prance around her. Poor lady, always mending; be it clothes or
relationships. And I was one hyper kid, dreaming of being the next
Bruce Lee; I loved kicking and the stitching at the bottoms of my
shorts would always come off. It took a gunshot in my foot to mellow
me down otherwise I just wasn’t ready to grow up. As a college student,
returning back from CP (a popular market in Delhi) after getting a new
pair of jeans stitched, I launched into a fancy sidekick while waiting for
the bus home and the entire bottom stitching from the zipper to the
belt came off. It was an amusing upwind bus ride back home.

However there was nothing fancy about my mother. She was just an
ordinary woman, no great stunner, nothing very intellectual and no
major credentials to boast of. She was just a hardworking, dedicated
tireless soul with a heart of gold. She had always been a no frills lady
who spoke her heart and walked the talk.

It is natural for a child to expect his mother to be loving and

affectionate and as we grow older we shift our expectations of love. I
have lived with that feeling of being unloved for decades now as far
back as I can remember and it took me awhile to realise that love is not
always expressed, sometimes it just has to be felt and occasionally
re-assessed.

Expectations are often still born as I had said in one of my recent

Haiku ;( Haiku-Oak )that does not stop us from nurturing hope. From
the mother to the beloved and then the wife to the kids, life comes a
full circle and you realise it is all right to stand alone as long as you
can strive to be yourself. But this is about my mother so I must stay on
course.

The eldest of six sisters and two alcoholic riffraff younger brothers, my
mother lived like Atlas untiringly shouldering her wobbly world which
was always in a tizzy, yet she was rarely dizzy. Her father renamed
Kranti (revolution) Kumar by none other than the legendary Bhagat
Singh was a revolutionary freedom fighter himself.

A much wanted terrorist during the British Raj, Kranti Kumar had little
time for family spending 18 years in various jails and a lifetime of
being on the run. My mother, Urmila was born on 08 January 1939 and
was barely seven years old when her father was languishing in Lahore
jail and India tottered to independence. He had to be smuggled out
back to India months later in a goods train by his Muslim comrades in
the midst of the chaotic mayhem of the partition of 1947.

How my grandmother managed to cross over from Lahore to India with

her small kids must have been a heart wrenching story but no one is
alive to tell me about it.

Post independence, Kranti Kumar and his family lived as refugees for
over a decade at Purana Quilla( Old Fort) at Delhi. He was barely
considered a hero as he had belonged to the Revolutionary Party which
disintegrated with the hanging of Bhagat Singh. It was the Congress
that came to the helm of political affairs with Nehru in the driving seat
and Kranti Kumar had the distinction of gifting a black rose to Nehru
at a public meeting. Gandhiji had rightly wanted Congress disbanded
and he was a Mahatma in every sense. The Congress then had scant
regard for other freedom fighters that were just shaking off the
terrorist tag. The torture Kranti Kumar had undergone as a prisoner
had shattered his health. It was a turnaround history when I took my
ailing mother to visit the secret Mughal era dungeons in Red fort while
being posted there and she wept saying her father had been here as
well. Post Independence Kranti Kumar struggled to make ends meet by
turning into a freelance journalist. It is remarkable that he could write
in English, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu with fluency.

He chose to move to Panipat instead of staying on in Delhi when

offered compensatory land by the government probably due to his wish
to stay away from the politically hyped Delhi and its higher cost of
living. My mother took to teaching Home science to add to the family’s
income. My grandmother would sing Classical Hindustani music on All
India Radio and also taught music at home. I have vivid childhood
memories of her room turned into baithaks adorned with bolsters,
sitars, tanpuras, harmoniums and tablas.

My mother continued to support her family morally and probably

financially as well even after her marriage. She lost her father soon
after I was born. Kranti Kumar the man who defied and fought the
British went down violently at the hands of his own brethren. The RSS
(the original right wing Hindu group) had called a bandh
(strike/closedown) demanding further partition of Punjab on linguistic
basis. Always the revolutionary, Kranti Kumar opposed the divisive
idea of carving out linguistic states. He decided to protest the bandh by
getting his friend tyre shop opened and sat down to play chess with
him. His defiant non-violent protest was met by a faceless mob that
resorted to arson. The tyre shop was set on fire with Kranti Kumar and
two others locked inside. They were charred beyond recognition and
his mortal remains could only be identified by his badly burnt
wristwatch.

His killing turned into a major political event and ministers including
Indira Gandhi herself and Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited the bereaved
family. They were soon forgotten when either political party had
extracted their mileage from the event. I was barely one year old then
but I grew up hearing the events and my distaste for political parties
especially those that align themselves on religion stems largely from
this singular event. To write with justice on my maternal grandfather
would take reasonable research and this is one thing I shall undertake
in the near future. But any attempt to describe my mother would be
futile without describing her roots.

My mother played a pivotal role in arranging and settling the marriages

of all her sisters. She was lucky to have her husband’s support in the
then male dominated society of ours. She was a mother figure in the
literal sense, mother to her own kids, mother to her younger siblings
and mother to my father’s younger siblings as he is also the eldest in
his family. No wonder, she had very little time to be my mother alone.

She was also a working lady travelling considerable distance by train to

teach home science. I was brought up more by my aunts on and off. My
fondest memories are of my maternal grandmother’s home. I remember
learning to play chess as a little kid and soon beating the old fogies
who sat around the tube well. And then there were swings on trees,
how I loved them, unlike the ones you get in city parks, you could fly
with these roped ones, feel the high branches, be a bird. We had no
toothbrushes or toothpaste out there. The neem brush too was
unpalatable for us kids so it was a paste of mustard oil and salt that we
would rub into our teeth and it tasted so good. There was also this
earthly taste of water drawn from wells and filled into pitchers. It had
that wee bit of salty taste which became a fixation. I would add a pinch
of salt to the drinking water back in Delhi just to come close to that
taste. Someone caught me doing it and I got slapped for it.

I was nicknamed Jooti chor (shoe thief) since I would steal any fancy
slippers/shoes of visitors and go hide with them under the bed. I used
to have a sizeable collection under my grand ma’s bed, I am told. I
wonder where this shoe fetish died; among so many of my childhood
dreams; maybe it was a sound thrashing. And then there used to be a
big pond close to our backyard where buffalos and kids would splash
and wrestle endlessly. I would always run free of my maternal uncles
and let go the moment we would hit the pond. Without knowing any
form of swimming, I would just plunge in and wait for my uncles to
rescue me and I refused to give up despite almost drowning a couple of
times.

I learned a valuable tip in that pond, one could float in water holding
onto a buffalo’s tail but never try this with a cow, no matter how holy
cows may be; floating cows will make you sink! I also remember how I
excited I was on seeing a blond buffalo for the first time ever, there
were none in Delhi.

My mother would tell me that I was extremely popular for narrating

with great oratory skills outlandish stories interwoven with religious
sermons to the local audience gathered under the banyan tree nearby.
Somewhere down the line, I turned poet from pure angst may be, but
the story teller still seems to be dormant deep inside.

It has been ages since I visited that place. The township, Athh(8) marla
in Punjabi was belatedly renamed Kranti Nagar after my Grandfather
but there are no traces of him or my mother or my grandmother
anymore. A part of me wants to go and re-connect, yet another one
shirks at the likely disappointment of finding nothing as the same. I
wish to live on dreaming that such place would always be there, a
sanctuary in the lap of my grandmother away from the madness. She is
long gone and so is my mother and the property and the surroundings
as well but they live on in my cherished dreams which would get
nullified if I face up and visit that place again.

When I was born, my parents lived in a single rented room along with
my paternal grandmother and two younger siblings of my father and a
constant stream of relatives from Punjab because Delhi was the place
to seek a new fortune. My mother was mother not only to her own
younger brothers and sisters but also to the younger siblings of her
husband and continued to perform her motherly role with full gusto
long after they had kids of their own. She could and sometimes
reprimanded any of them and they would always be deferential to her.
After all she was instrumental in getting most of them married and well
settled. She was a disciplinarian of sorts and did not believe in
mollycoddling any one. She was also extremely frugal without being a
miser. The most charitable of hosts as long as she was physically able
yet she considered any form of wastage as a sin.

It is amazing that she could happily run the ever filling home with the
meager salary of my dad. I have no memories of that one room house in
which people depended on a public toilet and bathroom but I hear from
my relatives and also my father that she somehow managed to run a
family and play hostess to hordes of satiated visitors. It is always
unfair to compare but I couldn’t help feeling rotten when my wife
would equate my relatives’ short visits as intrusion of privacy.

The multitude of India thrived in community living and joint families, I

was brought up in a joint family myself, it has some unparallel merits.
You always belonged; you also knew your neighbour and his relatives as
well. This urban alienation was so uncommon way back then.

After a few years, I must have been around four when my father
purchased a small flat. It took selling off of the agricultural land in
Punjab and a hefty loan to buy a tiny flat in Delhi. It was one
boisterously happy family in a small nest; my grandparents, parents,
uncle and aunt and us kids. This is the time I remember vividly and all
those vacations to my maternal grandma happened around this time.
My uncle (dad’s younger brother) got married to my mom’s younger
sister. To this day, I continue calling her maasi (maa-si--- like mother,
which translates as maternal aunt) while my uncle remains Chacha
(paternal uncle).My younger brother was born and my mom had her
hands full. Soon after my cousins were born in quick succession and
my aunt got busy too.

My paternal grandparents were a study in contrast; my grandma was so

fair, pure and pious with kindness galore while my grand-pa was dark,
short and ill tempered. He had scant regard for religion and faith
almost till his dying years. As the elder daughter-in-law my mother
walked a tight rope giving into the diktats of her father-in-law and the
strict religious rituals of my grand-ma.

The entire family slept on the open rooftop in summers. My mother

never came to my rescue when I would be punished into getting into
the rooster position for not being able to recite tables correctly. I would
be bent over crying my heart out silently because I was always a
stubborn idiot and my grand-pa or my uncle would look on angrily
hoping I would seek pardon. Even when it drizzled on the rooftop I
would avoid running down with the rest just to escape being cornered
again. I never learned my tables and numbers continue to baffle and
scare me, there is solace I find only in words. It was on this open roof, I
feel in love with clouds and their changing shapes. They remain a
recurring dream.

My grandpa had this family barber, Ram Das who was one villain of a
man. Clad in dhoti and clutching a tin box of rusty implements he was
my grandpa’s favorite weapon against the kids. Leaving my sister, all
the kids would be lined up and made to endure a katori (bowl shaped)
haircut. I hated that barber, the sadistic pleasure he got from shaving
off my flowing locks. I had my revenge once, when I managed to
unleash Rosy, our German shepherd and set her after him. I was
soundly thrashed for this act by my mother but it ensured that the
poor guy never felt at home ever again at our place.

A few years later, my father was selected to teach at Nigeria and

fortunes turned for the entire extended family. We were financially well
off and I got to see the world, most of it except the Americas and South
East Asia. My mom took to teaching again as well. This was a brief
period of mirth, fun and learning. As he grew up, my younger brother
was discovered to be mentally retarded and needed to be cared for. My
mom had to rightfully shift her full attention on him.

There are few things I imbibed from her which she never mentioned, as
the saying goes, children barely listen but they watch intently. My
mom was often spit fire and had a short fuse but would readily
apologise even to a child or a servant if she realised she had erred. She
was always happy to share whatever she had with the needy. I
remember she would carry huge parcels of gifts and food to orphanages
on my younger brother’s birthdays. Something I could not pick up was
her tidiness. She would always clean the kitchen and the rooms to her
personal satisfaction well after the maid had cleaned them.

In a couple of years, I had to return back to India as the educational

standards were poor. Off I went as a hostler to a public school in
Mussorie. I missed my mother but would never speak up; in any case
we never had the luxury of easy communication means. I found
company in Tibetan students most of whom were destitute relying on
foreign aid scholarships. They were semi-hippies and I aped them. The
Woodstock school was close by and we were the poor cousins of
Woodstock.

The housemaster; Faryaz Khan Baghi, bless him, I remember his name
and his gait and that he was also a struggling poet. A strict man who
had phantoms of his own to chase, he just couldn’t handle the boys.
Seniors and juniors were sandwiched in a single hostel. I was a little
kid who suddenly woke up that it does not feel good being touched
surreptitiously by any one. I missed my mother and found some
substitute big brothers who were not sexually depraved. Then, one day
Baghi lost his cool on some senior boy over some indiscipline and
thrashed him, soon after a hurried meeting of boys was held and a
rebellion launched. When he came for the night round Baghi was
welcomed with waves of shoes flung at him from the boys hiding
behind quilts. He had to beat a hasty retreat and was locked up in his
room. The next morning, the boys hit the school complex ransacking
everything that came their way. The police had to intervene and
parents were summoned. Since mine were abroad, I was put on a bus
home. Folks back at home were shocked to see my hippie state. I had
scabies and lice in my unkempt long flowing hair. Without any
ceremony, my head was tonsured and I was put under discipline and
medication.

My parents had to come down and moved me to a proper boarding

school, The Daly College at Indore. I could get to my mother only once
in two years and my friends became my world. The bond I have with
some of my school and college buddies will see me beyond my death
because I will return to scare the wits out of them even after I am gone.

After a lukewarm academic performance, it was tough to get admission

into any good college with a subject of my choice. I got into English
Honours not on my marks but showing my so far hidden poetry to the
Head of Department. By the time, my parents returned back for good, I
was in the Army after a series of never ending rebounds in matters of
the heart.

The distance with my mother had grown and I had turned into an
impulsive young man who was brash on surface but craved for love
internally. Life suddenly started downhill for my family, my sister’s
husband eloped with another woman and went missing for couple of
years. My sister fell back to family for a couple of years along with her
two little kids. My mother was shattered and her prime focus was my
sister and my younger brother who had grown into a young man but
had the mind of a five year old.

I was on my own seeking out adventure and proving myself to the

world at large. In 1992, I was in action and engineered an opportunity
ambush that could have swung against me but four of us, me and 3 of
my handpicked soldiers got away killing six terrorists in a bloody fight
in which the bullets ran out. One of my soldiers got a direct hit and
died before my eyes. In the ensuing madness, I killed the buggers with
my bare hands, pulling them out from beneath the tractor under which
they had taken positions. This is how I got shot on my foot because
they could not shoot on my head. From their recovered documents, it
was revealed that they were on a mission to knock off 21 people the
same night. Folks at home say my mother knew something had gone
wrong with me right at that moment and I was also told decades later
that someone close to me had felt the same uneasy feeling around that
very time. Is there telepathy of the heart?

Only my uncle could visit me briefly at the hospital probably because

Punjab was unsafe in those days. Unaccustomed to be confined to the
bed, full of lust and a bruised heart I soon got into a relationship and
was married before the year ended. My mother just wanted me to be
happy and did not oppose the marriage. Yet my wife barely stayed with
my parents. As an Infantry officer I was off again, this time to a UN
mission in Somalia. I changed when my daughter was born. Here was
love, pure and unadulterated. While my wife kept my mother away from
the young one and had her cared for by her own mother, I was left
craving for my daughter’s attention whenever I would return from field
areas. To make up my absence, I would only pamper her, love her
endlessly and would do anything to break the traditional role of the
father by doing everything a baby needs.

It took me a long time of regret to know that though my mother was

busy trying to keep her own world intact, she craved for her
granddaughter. Her world was falling apart; the well nurtured joint
family had broken up. She was no more mother to all her siblings and
the extended family. She was struggling to come to terms with the
facts that her daughter would live on her own after the failed marriage
and she had that overgrowing fear about the wellbeing of her younger
son who would be a dependent for life.

I was away physically and emotionally and woke up a wee bit too late
for my mother. I was trying to keep my marriage alive while my mother
was slowly decaying. She was ill for a considerable period and the
cancer went undetected till it was fully blown. I seethe with anger even
now that a damned medical specialist of a doctor failed to detect the
growing cancer in her uterus even with an ultrasound. It was a
homeopathic doctor who sensed things were drastically wrong and
rushed her for a thorough check up.

The drifting son finally returned kind of late. I clawed back to get
posted to Delhi and look after her. Ah! Regrets, so many of them, I
ensured she went through surgeries and bouts of chemotherapies but I
failed to be at her side as often as I should have been. She wasn’t made
to feel at home at my own home, I wonder when it that I had a home of
my own. In many ways I failed her as a son.

The chemo and the cancer turned her into a poor shadow of what she
was once. She had lost her lush hair and it really hurt me that drugs
which would shed her hair would be causing irreparable damage to her
entire body apart from subduing the cancerous cells. For a brief period
she suffered from severe anxiety and had to be placed under mood
uplifting drugs. She bounced back with the meds and seemed to take
the cancer in her stride. Just before her last few days, she seemed
cheerful till the cancer reared out of nowhere. She was put through
chemo again and this one had hit her hard. It seems she was
discharged before her RBC count had fully recovered. I got her back to
my dad’s home and got on with my work. She became bedridden and
started deteriorating rapidly. By the time I got home to her, she could
barely speak that she was happy to see me eventually.

I rushed her to the hospital, threw all my weight and money around,
after a few hours the docs claimed they had succeeded in reviving her
and that she will sail through. There was no waiting area at the ICU,
everyone left to return next day morning.

It was the night of 8th November 98, there was something eating me
inside, there was a feeling that things were beyond my control and I
should stop being casual and stick around. I refused to return home.
My younger cousin brother stayed back and slept in the car. Around
1Am while pacing the corridor outside the ICU I was called and
informed that they were sorry, septicemia had set in and she was
leaving from the suffering for good. I told them to inform my cousin
downstairs so that others could be called.

I stood beside my mother watching them take the life support systems
off. Clutching her hands, I felt her depart helplessly. She did not
clutch me back. In a matter of few minutes, she was gone.

Months later, my father chose to open my mother’s cupboard and give

away her belongings. The sarees and the jewellery were given away to
relatives. There were also umpteen numbers of rags of cloth neatly
rolled up and stacked; there were no takers for them. She always found
a use for anything, nothing was ever wasted. Inside her locker, was a
small handkerchief which had little flowers as embroidery, the charred
wristwatch of her father was found wrapped in that. She had carried it
as her treasure, not the mementos or the awards her deceased father
received but his last remains. She carried it across continents and
back, never revealing it to any one because it was her own memoir.

09 Feb 2010 Shyam

My mother at her sister’s wedding.