“What had happened to her?”
Sometimes even when we know, the answer is lost deep inside
our psyche. I was advised not to sleep in her room.
Yet that night when I was sitting alone in my mother's room, contemplating that
people do leave at fifty-five, I took in the strangeness of the night with the
emptiness of that room. The room in which I had memories of my childhood like
yesterday's reality existed in clear personification: laughter, tears, fights,
loving words and her agonies of unrequited support from some members of the
family. Once, I was too young to understand what agony a woman can go through,
leaving her poor maternal household after marriage, if she cannot prove the
worth of her existence. She may receive love, material goods, support from
in-laws but she may not receive the respect of an independent individual.
I was so naive that I
could never understand my mother's anguish and pain until she fell sick, due to
medical blunders, until she was unable to leave the bed. Sometimes I wished to
punish myself, but then I realised that I must forgive myself since forgiveness
can open the portal to achieve better visions. And I did achieve that when I
realised how much I loved my mother. I had finally received the justice of the
universe in the form of supporting my Ma selflessly when she needed someone to
stand beside her, to bid her a comfortable goodbye when she was crossing over to
another world. In the process, I suffered a lot. I went through a
transformation myself, I witnessed unbearable pain, I saw tragic truths about
human existence. Finally, I felt that some of us are not mere humans, but
entities that roam around this world to transmit messages to the others.
We are messengers. I
am a messenger.
That night when I was
sitting in silence meditation, my thoughts were torturing me with the last
words and actions of my ailing mother. It was suffocating, but only for a
while. When my tears came like a wild river, at that same moment a thunder
rumbled. I felt as if someone somewhere was watching the whole episode. I
opened the windows, there were two windows in my mother's room and a door that
opened to the balcony. I walked barefooted to the balcony and the cool breeze
touched me. The rain was wild that night, the thunder and lightning were
opening portals. I had not realised at that moment itself, but when like a
helpless human I came back to my bed and slept, I witnessed a life changing
incident.
A dream.
The genie came to my
dream and whispered the basics of this world. He said I was not supposed to cry
since I had accomplished a very important task. This was my entry into the
world of entities.
I had a rough sleep, I
remember. It was difficult to tread into the world of sleep, dream and waking
layers at the same time. I saw my mother smiling and saying that she was fine.
I saw the genie teaching me lessons, in which he said I needed to explore life
and existence. I saw myself sitting under a tree and watching a flowing river.
What was happening? Was I too exhausted? Perhaps yes, but if I had not believed
anything at that time, my life would have been stuck - with the thoughts of
mere life, birth and death.
It was not the first
time that I had felt something unusual and unique about my life. Since
childhood I had witnessed certain things that I could not reveal to others. I
was never close to my parents. Sometimes we are disconnected from our
parents and it is not a crime. My parents always had my brother who was just a
year younger to me. A joint family meant that some children could be closer to
other family members, and I was an example. I loved my grandmother (Amma), but whenever I
tried to explain my thoughts to her, she smiled and told me that I would
discover the truths about existence at the right time. And in 2016, she left
this world on a Rakhi Purnima, like she had always predicted herself.
Life of a human is more
than what we see; a world exists within me and it perishes with
our existence.
I
wish to restructure the past by adding and deleting facts but I cannot stop
imagining - two Muslim boys on racing bikes in an empty road near our home, and
my mother about to cross…
I
had left for Ooty after my Amma left the world, because my senior colleague Ms.
Priya thought that I would do justice in mentoring the high school students
from the Good Shepherd School for IELTS; and also I must thank her that she did
realise I needed a change.
Perhaps
the mountains were calling to transform me!
After two encounters with death, both being my mothers, I
realized that life never continues in the same patterns. Childhood is not an
alter-ego for adulthood, rather it is the ambit that remains forever within the
urge of humans to outgrow the circuit of innocence and reach the shores of
experience, for the latter has power to attract the curious mankind. And so
finally, we all walk through different stages in life, yet the traces of a
child remain in us forever. But among us, those who unknowingly hold onto the
doors of the nascent images of being the self, we suffer.
I left behind a part of me amidst the serene beauty of the
mountains. I had decided to give some time to my aching heart and focus on the
equation of my relationship with my parents. The acknowledgment of the fact
that I was far away from them till my Amma was my banyan tree made me restless.
It was not that I did not care for my parents, but the connection was not as
children usually have with their biological parents.
Love always finds its ways when it wishes to, and losing
Amma has triggered the process of attaining closure and meaning to a blank
episode in my life. That was the phase when I wrote my poetry manuscript - I
Know the Truth of a Broken Mirror, which was published by Professor
Anandalal through his publication the Writers Workshop, Kolkata. That was also
the time when my mother came forward to protect her daughter from the dark
clouds of sorrows, and she did this first time independently.
Yes, independently, I emphasize. My mother was not
complaining while she was dying on the Narayana Hospital bed, rather the
fighter in her was telling me to open an organization in my Amma’s name; to
support the people who needed true guidance in understanding the confusing
truths of the medical world. She was proud of me when I could finally reach out
at the right direction. Dr. Debi Shetty had sent a letter for her to the
hospital CEO to treat her importantly, after many mishandlings in different
hospitals.
On 30th June 2019, when I heard her words, I stood –
stunned, broken. Words almost choked me and I questioned myself - who was responsible for the rift that had
always been between my mother and me?
Amma loved me. But Ma and Amma shared a relationship of
in-laws and that shattered my existence after I lost both of them...
I was drowning in grief and loneliness when Amma left the
world. But when I was struggling, my mother came forward to embrace me
silently; in silence because unfortunately we had never shared a deep bond
before. And she left...
As I write this now, I feel the immense pain that is
scratching me from within like the claws of a tiger would do to a prey. I am a
prey to the circumstances that led to the story of my life, and kept me away
from my mother only to bring both of us closer at that moment when she departed
from this world. I feel her around me, silently whispering to me how much she
had always loved her little girl but could never express…
Only if we could rewind the old times....
Selfless love is like a myth in the contemporary world, but
myths are hidden truths that only brave hearts can uncover. Amma had already
taught me several valuable secrets of this world. Sometimes for these kinds of
knowledge I was trolled by the friends since my thoughts were not parallel to
theirs’. My childhood was like the fleeting clouds, quietly passing by without
making a noise, for perhaps clouds believe that thunder and lightning are only
dedicated to the storms. I was growing in silence, and I guess no one around me
realized that I had a parallel world inside me; and a silent voice kept
teaching me that perspectives matter, differences matter, solitude matters,
dreams matter, being loved matters…
My mother loved to sing whenever she was happy; she wasn’t a
trained singer, but she enjoyed telling us a story - ‘I was travelling to Gariahat on the auto, and I started singing. Do
you know that the auto driver told me, 'Didi (sister) do whatever in life, do
not leave singing!’ She used to laugh after relating this story to us each
time. I wondered at times after she had left, what if she was a trained singer?
Perhaps she would have been one of the best. Sometimes we do not get the right
opportunities in life and there can be multiple reasons for that; however,
there are moments when we realize that certain things are not required for us.
Yet we wish.
Her name was Mukti,
a beautiful name but whoever had given her that name did not know that names
have a strange impact on humans. I had read about this theory once but
experienced the truth with my own name and my mother’s.
freedom is a wish that the hearts
crave
either one is alive or dead…
till the last breath one can weave
dreams of life and ways to be free…
Mukti means freedom! Throughout her life,
my mother had craved for freedom—from chains of sorrows, anger, family issues,
financial-dependency on her husband. Finally, we both wished freedom from the
mammoth blunders of the medical boards in charge of her, both in Kolkata - Apex
Institute of Medical Sciences and Irish Hospital, and Vellore CMC had
committed.
She had started a home business of a saree boutique to become independent.
Women do try to sustain even in the face of unhappy
situations. But I always failed to understand what her struggles were. It was
only after that day when I picked up a burning bamboo to cremate her together
with my brother that my womanhood whispered to me, ‘Motherhood is not about a woman, but a human who can nurture other
humans. It is a quality naturally given to women, hence they need more care and
warmth from their own families…’
My mother was gone when my inner wisdom decided to connect
with me.
Nothing in this world is a coincidence. The experiences of
life teach us the value of being a human; and even though I was thoughtful
before, losing my mother so early in life was like a curtain removed from a
dark room. From 3rd July 2019 till the month of December of that year, I had
stayed awake day-and-night in her room, trying to process the relationship that
I had shared with my mother. Initially everything looked blurred and
meaningless, and the questions kept oscillating around me.
Why ma and I always fought if we
were destined to come so close towards the end? Why did we never realize that
we actually shared a strong bond beneath the social pressures? Why did fate
create the rift between us, when at the end my mother had to ask me to hold her
palms tightly because she had felt that only I was her strength? Why did we
come so close when we had to depart so suddenly? I was in pain and there were no
answers, not even the voice of my wise Amma!
I could only hear silence and sometimes I felt that my
mother was telling me from the walls of her room that she was in a better
place… and she was at peace.
When my mother had met with her accident in June 2017, I was
not in India; and I could never see those boys who had been riding the
motorbikes. In March 2020, the universal power granted my wish, disguised as an
insurance officer I had visited the household of that family who still felt
that those boys did nothing. ‘There was an old woman who could not cross
the road. It was her fault and the accident happened.’
I heard their words and nodded in silence, and came back
home. Perhaps I had attained a closure, I was yet to process it fully.
Afterlife is a story to me that I am still exploring -
sometimes I keep thinking where did my grandmother and mother travel to? And I
wonder when I will open a door to see the light waiting for me at the other end
of the horizon, to accept my own parallel truth.
Bio: Born and brought up in Kolkata, Anindita Bose is inspired by the zeal of her city of joy. She believes words have immense possibilities to create life out of nothing. Her poems and short stories got published in various National and International magazines and anthologies. She is an interviewer for the International Online Journal – The Enchanting Verses Literary Review. Her Solo Poetry book is 'I Know the Truth of a Broken Mirror' [Writers Workshop, 2018].
She has worked as an IELTS Mentor and as a High School English Teacher in Blue Mountains School, Ooty, India. She is a co-founder of Rhythm Divine Poets, the six- year-old poetry group in Kolkata. Currently she is working as an independent script writer in Kolkata and has shot her first Bengali short film Anubhobe..., with director Prajna Dutta, which will be released soon in 2020. She has directed poetry films of Poet Sonnet Mondal in 2020, which got selected in Glass House Festival 2020.
Wonderful and emotive language along with the emotional story narrating mother-daughter relationship.
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