Mummy

 

‘What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.’ W.S. Maugham

 

Middle of sixth decade is not even the beginning of old age; Today, old age is believed to commence at sixty-six. By this logic sixth decade is the old age of the youth. Memories of past now overwhelm the dreams of future. When future shrinks both in size and the scope of its possibilities, past appears more intriguing.

 

 

Mummy

  

Mummy was the pivot of my life when I was young. As I grew, she got relegated to periphery. I do not know how or when this process set in. I woke up to it only when her failing health forced me to pay her more attention.

 

Now I often wonder about it.

…

Mummy cooked the best food in the world. This was as obvious as the fact that day followed the night. Mummy was beautiful. My idea of beauty grew from her. That she was short and fat did not matter. This was how beautiful women were supposed to be. Mummy was intelligent. She could teach me all the subjects. Well… almost all. Mothers were not supposed to know maths and science. This was the domain of fathers. Mummy had read the best books. I listened entranced when she talked about Hindi poetry: Maithili Sharan Gupt’s Yashoda, Subhadra Kumari Chauhan’s Yeh Kadam Ka Ped, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar’s Himalay, Tulsi and Meera’s verses. She introduced me to writers like Munshi Premchand, Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay, and Tagore. I read their books with wonder and relish.

 

Mummy could conjure solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems. The night before the civics exam in my sixth grade is one of the most dreadful memories of my school years. I realised on the evening before the exam that I hadn’t read about half the book even once. Fear made my blood run cold. Mummy sat with me the whole night and explained all the chapters. She remained calm and patient throughout the ordeal. I did well in the paper.

Best of all, mummy loved me like no one else. Hers was the only unconditional love I came across in all my life. I knew she was there for me always. Mummy thought I was the most brilliant child in the world. She believed I could never do any wrong.

 

…

 

Then I grew up.

 

Mummy could still explain the poetry of Tulsidas but the social sciences in English were beyond her. Movies that mummy appreciated were good but this was the era of new-wave cinema of Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani. I noticed that she became silent when I talked about these. She was overwhelmed with joy when results of entrance exams I had taken for admission in graduate courses, started pouring in. She had never had occasion to think about the merits and demerits of different branches of engineering or the edge of a particular college of medicine. She did not interfere in my choice but urged me not to worry about the expenses involved.

College life widened the circle of my experience. I ate out frequently and gradually I stopped associating the idea of good food with mummy. I discovered the delicate elegance of Urdu shayari and depths of spirituality in Mahadevi Verma’s poetry. I now read more prose in English. Poets and novelists mummy had brought in my life shrunk to a distant childhood memory. When home on vacations, I found fewer topics to converse with her. She fussed over me indulgently and I flinched at the touch of her demonstrative affection. A world different from Mummy’s, now informed my perception of beauty. She started showing early symptoms of osteoarthritis and hypertension, likely effects of her round figure. I began to remind her, mildly and evasively, of her obesity. Fat was after all not so beautiful.

…

I graduated and was commissioned in Air Force. Soon I married and my immediate family grew. I found more people to share affection. Contact with mummy was now limited to cursory phone calls on couple of occasions every month. And all the while age was running her down. Every time I met her after a gap of many months, I noticed how her limp had aggravated, her jowl hung more loose, grey in her hair had increased, her plait had grown thinner, her hearing had deteriorated further and her movements around the house were slower and more deliberate. She talked more about her health. I exhorted her, rather strongly, to take more interest in books, in the world out there, and other such matters of mind. She bore my admonitions in silence, seldom protesting meekly.  It didn’t dawn on me that while my world had grown, hers had shrivelled.

Advancing osteoarthritis of both knees – even after knee-replacement – drastically reduced mummy’s mobility. She rarely left the house now. Daddy suffered a debilitating fracture of hip bone and was now confined indoors. This broke mummy’s last contact with the world beyond her immediate home. They came to live with me.

 

With difficulty mummy waddled from one room to the other. Her eyesight was failing but she spent most of her time reading religious books, the book in her hands almost touching her nose. She became more dependent on daddy, who was himself severely handicapped by the complications of hip surgery. I saw that she felt miserably lonesome, but I was too engrossed with life to think of ways to alleviate this. Occasionally she would linger a wee bit longer, as she walked across the door of the room, where I read a book.

‘What are you reading, Rajiv?’

‘Oh! This wouldn’t interest you, mummy.’

She would hesitate a little, but then proceed to her room.

 

Mummy gradually withdrew in a shell. I couldn't reach her however hard I tried. Rarely a thing about her– the faint fragrance of the talc she always used, emanating from her clothes; the way she wound shed hair around her finger while combing, before discarding them; her handkerchief tucked in the fold of her saree at her waist– reminded me of the mummy of my childhood, but only for the briefest of moments.

 

Physicians said: this is dementia and gradually she may lose all her memory. She went through the day’s routine with extreme weariness and often refused to get out of bed in the mornings.

…

Mummy became increasingly morose over next six months. She did not utter a word for days. Then one day she refused to eat altogether. A psychiatrist diagnosed her condition as severe depression. He said she suffered from Anhedonia. Dictionary defines this as ‘A psychological condition characterised by inability to experience pleasure in normally pleasurable acts.’ I heard this word for the first time. She improved with new medicines, but her mood did not recover completely.

She aged rapidly now. She would get up from the bed with extreme difficulty. Daddy’s mind was failing faster than hers. Mummy’s only source of companionship was receding from her life. She would stubbornly prod daddy to talk to her. He had of late become irritable and would often snub her. Daddy took to bed in his last days. He was then served food in the bed. Mummy would limp to the dining table alone. She would eat food clumsily, disinterestedly and soon return to her bed. She stopped coaxing daddy for conversation. She deteriorated alarmingly till she was unable to get up from the bed. Daddy expired in a few weeks.

Mummy had now stopped talking on her own. She did not demand anything. She ate when given food, drank when offered a glass of water, sat up in the bed when propped up and lay shivering if the air conditioner in her room was inadvertently set at a low temperature. She answered in monosyllables when spoken to. Occasionally she would point to her shoulders or knees if I enquired after pain. She could recognise few of us whom she saw daily.

Soon she stopped eating solids. And in a couple of weeks, she wouldn’t touch even semi-solids. We fed her a cup or two of milk and some sweet yoghurt, but with exceeding difficulty. For a week she subsisted on a little more than water. She did not respond to me now. She would barely open her eyes when I called her repeatedly. She lay in the bed without moving.

I had decided some time back that I will not admit her in a hospital for terminal care. I wanted to provide her the security of a home and the assurance of my company till her last moment. I did not want her to spend her last days in the company of strangers, with multiple tubes inserted in her body, needles being stuck incessantly, while the critical care physicians treated the laboratory reports and she lay lost in this intimidating atmosphere. I felt this would only prolong her agony. It was a tough decision to withhold life support from her.

…

I do not know, if in the end, mummy had any perception of home or us. Her gradual decline to oblivion was heart-wrenching. It was my private grief, unbearable yet incommunicable. I often sat with her in the deep night when others in the house slept. I caressed her forehead gently. I do not remember patting her thus, ever in my life. She would open her eyes but I did not see any light of recognition in them now. I wanted to ask her if she agreed with my decision to let her breath her last in her own bed. But she was not around to ease my dilemma. All my life I had witnessed her blind love for me. Till a few weeks back, even in this advanced stage of mental and physical weakening, a faint shadow of contentment would spread on her withered face, when I sat with her, holding her hand. I wondered - could the solace of my company give her the strength to withstand the profound agony she might be suffering now? A medley of images flit across my mind, mainly of my childhood. I hugged her as a painful lump rose in my throat. She kept breathing heavily.

Mummy died slowly in front of my eyes. All her life mummy had been a god-fearing, kind soul. She never hurt a person knowingly. She believed in an infinitely compassionate, ever-loving God. I witnessed the working of this unsurpassably benevolent, just, and omnipotent God, as her body and mind wasted slowly. I wished her a speedy death that would not come.

On 8^th August 2018, mummy breathed her last as I sat by her side, a few weeks short of her seventy ninth birthday. I knew it was the end. She had been breathing irregularly and with extreme effort for hours. I held her thin hands in mine. Gently, I stroked the dry skin over her sunken cheeks and forehead. She lay flaccid, like a hurt animal. She gasped, ever so lightly, and then she was no more.

Mummy had always, willingly acquiesced in all my decisions. She was witness to my change of belief – i.e., abandoning of faith – and never seemed perturbed by it. I felt, like everything else about me, she had accepted this too, unquestioningly. I could never be wrong. A few close relatives gathered for the last rites. I kept the ceremony bare. Early next morning, I went to the cremation ground, on the banks of Hindan river, to gather her ashes. Pyre was warm even after fifteen hours. I immersed the ashes midstream, in the swift flowing Ganga at Garh Mukteshwar which was swollen immensely after the monsoon.

Mummy lingered in her room for a while. Every time I passed by her door, I reflexively looked at her bed, half expecting to see her sprawled there.

Mummy will be in my thoughts for long, popping up in situations that were associated with her when she was alive. She would live in my memory till I die and silently in the genes of her descendants for as long as her lineage continues.