“I’m unbearably tired, so terribly exhausted, I just want to sleep,” she said. And sleep she did – that eternal sleep – never to wake up again. This article is a long overdue tribute to her. She had always maintained that I will never find time to write about her, she was all too familiar with my procrastination, my long list of excuses.
Full Circle [Illustration by Anup Singh]
It had all started well enough, she was the centre of my entire universe and nothing she did could ever be wrong. It suited her to a ‘T’. Had I carried on in the same vein, it would have saved a lot of heartache on both sides. But, that was not to be.
I had to grow up. With age, to my dismay, I discovered the clay feet of my idol. The chinks in her armour became all too apparent to me. Around the same time, she too discovered that I happened to have a mind of my own – as strong as hers. I had inherited, if nothing else, her willfulness.
For what seemed an interminable period of time, a fierce battle of wills ensued. We were constantly at loggerheads, making each other’s lives hell. At times, I would wonder why in the world couldn’t I have had a ‘placid’ mother like all my friends. Doubtlessly she also must have prayed for a less rebellious child!
That too was a phase, which mercifully passed, and we learned to accept each other with our respective shortcomings. She, for example, grudgingly conceded to respect my priorities and I finally understood that she tried to push me, not for any other reason but because she genuinely believed that I could do better.
That was one phase I look back fondly upon, when we shared our thoughts like old pals. We would discuss old films…
I remember one particular incident after we came out of a cinema theatre, squinting into the bright sunlight. When I began waxing eloquent over the poignant theme of Sahib, Bibi aur Gulam, there was a look of delight on her face that I had finally managed to look beyond ‘the angry young man’ and appreciate good cinema.
It had struck me as decidedly funny when I took her to the family doctor, a few years ago, for her regular checkup. She sat like an obedient child as the doctor gave the list of do’s and don’ts. It reminded me of the countless other occasions when we had been to him, when I was the patient and she, the escort. The role reversal tickled me, made me feel really grown up and I quite enjoyed bossing her around. She also revelled in this new role of being the sheltered one.
It had been a long innings for her, considering that she had been fending for herself ever since she finished her education. Marriage, too, did not bring any help, as my dad, the ever-moving army man, was never around long enough.
At a time when single parenting was not the ‘in’ thing, she brought me up single-handedly, with dad providing little else than moral support.
It was in May, 1999, that the role reversal was complete, how I wish now that it was not so final and so irreversible. A minor accident rendered her helpless as a baby, confined her to a room and made her dependent on me for the smallest of her needs. The clock had done a full circle.
It was a huge blow for her, but she pulled on valiantly, her spirit still indomitable – her temper worse and her already limited supply of patience wearing wafer-thin.
I would joke about how she was an impatient patient and she would scowl. How could she have been patient – her time was running short.
It is only in retrospect that I can see her decline with any clarity; it was so gradual that nobody noticed. She stopped taking any interest in either the television or the newspaper, both of which had been her soulmates since she became bedridden.
The clock had started winding backwards. She slipped into a delirium. This emissary of Death took away her mortal fear and by the time the coma enveloped her, she was firm with the impression that she had been completely cured of her various ailments.
I remember thinking how silly it is to be afraid of the ‘Great-Leveler’ – it happens to be so inordinately kind too. She never regained consciousness and escaped the trap of her diseased, disabled body peacefully.
It dawned on me, rather fatalistically, that a full-circle is also a zero. What remains with us is a vague sense of helplessness and a handful of memories.
