She Was Our Sun - And Our Moon, Too - - - -

My Mother

 When I returned she was already at a stage that she could hardly talk and rarely did. But she often responded to me, while others were not sure she even knew anyone by then. Perhaps out of fear of the state she was in, most people did not talk to her but around her or at her the way one does to an infant. But even infants are not incapable of all comprehension, they do get a lot; and she comprehended a lot more than people thought.

 When I came for a visit having graduated and found a job, she was waiting for us to arrive from the airport, and that surprised everyone - they were not aware she knew I was coming. And when I told her about my new position she said, good, I am coming with you. That was a shock to everyone, that she could comprehend so much let alone speak, and this coherently at that.

 Often I would ask her permission then to go out to the market, and it would take time before she would ok; and then I would ask if I should bring her something, and she would shyly say - that would be all right. Even I was not aware of how much she was aware of this dialogue. The day I told her I was going to leave to go for a job to Pondicherry, she very forcefully said "no!" and wouldn't let go of my hand. I gently persuaded her to allow me, since I was planning to go and look for a house to rent for the two of us, and gradually she relaxed her grip and allowed my hand to be free, but she was still not happy about it.

 She had deteriorated fast after I left India in 80, but I had left - been forced to leave with no options - the home she had brought us up in long before in '73; and what tortures she endured thereafter, either before '80 or since, I don't know. Speaking of horrors endured at his hand to each other was avoided generally in favour of having some time, some borrowed moments of peace and happiness when horror was not actually happening, so sharing of bad moments was rare even after, long after he left as well. But through all my years away from her, I was never left by a fear of hearing any day that she was finally gone, in a moment's violence for him. I never knew if she was alive any given minute, and this awareness had never left. .

 Of course, it had to be he who hunted out my address so he could ask an ex underling to write about her illness implying it was due to my leaving - and this lie had been propagated on and on, till perhaps even those who had heard everything and known him intimately might have doubted his beating and finally threatening to do unthinkable to me, even acting out a threat, to make me leave. As someone who had saved my life all those years immediately knew the logical chink in that particular propaganda said - if my leaving brought her to this what is it that they or he had done to encourage such thing rather than taking care of her?

 But there was no logic left, not even a self protection, once I heard about her health deterioration and not living much longer. He had known all along that to destroy me he had to get me and only a threat of her imminent death would do it, at which point I would ignore caution about my life. And that was only a secondary reason for bringing her to this - primary being his pleasure of destroying her. But it did work, and I did no longer have caution about meeting if in order to meet her. It was a matter of urgency about her life once again, of saving her if possible.

 Her life had begun differently and was very different until she married.

 She was born the last child of a man who had made his fortune the hard way - going to Burma for several years and working hard and saving to return - before marrying for the third time, and she was the fourth child of that marriage. Her father had by then lost most of his fortune helping out the sons of his first marriage and worried over his younger brood. Still, he was quite a man, and had turned around and opened a shop, having lost the orchards and wealth and so forth. He lived to see her less than a year old before he died.

 She was born in a hospital, which was unusual for the time - 1924 - in India. Her mother often recalled how the moon came up and into the room through the window just as she gave her first cry. Beautiful as the moon too, and far more, she was. It is difficult to describe someone like her, even in something so simple as looks, without giving sense of exaggeration or unbalance. Knowing her set standards of beauty that made most people seem ordinary, and yet her standards of noble character and goodness and so forth were high, so striving to like her has been a ever present goal. She was our star.

 Much of that developed later, as a lotus opens with heat and gives ever more beauty and fragrance. As a child, a young woman she was different. We heard stories on and on and knew her as few children know a mother. As a naughty child who was much loved but held up to standards when it came to work and study, as a young woman who strove to match it.

 When she was less than a year yet her father died and the four children with her mother - our grandmother - were taken by her brother, our great-uncle, to live with him in the town my grandmother was brought up in. For a while they were in a great big extended family - with my grandmother's grandparents' family. the children had a semblance of a happy family and the younger they were the less they had awareness of their loss. Grandmother had all the worry, and bore it quietly. her brother took responsibility, and supported them with his earnings while they grew up. He did not marry for nearly another two decades and adopted the youngest, my mother, so he could think of someone as his own. That merely meant that she had his name as her maiden name, they all lived together while growing up.

 The eldest, our uncle, was fifteen when he went to work. Their uncle wasn't much older - my grandmother had been married off at eight and had her first son at fifteen - and he was striving to work and support the family while still an aspiring student. This was ever the legacy we had, mother, us. So the eldest, our uncle, went to work at fifteen and had three jobs, around the clock with barely enough time to catch sleep for five hours. Grandmother usually sent her youngest, our mother, to wake him up - and she would pour water over the poor sleeping tired lad to wake him and then run down the stairs and be safe around the corner. Those tow, eldest and youngest of my grandmother's children, never lost the affection they had for one another.

 She was much loved in the joint family, being the youngest and beautiful and innocently naughty. The men were all very fond of her and the first query at lunch would be where was she - and the women looked around and said, she was here a moment ago; they were accused by the men of being unable to look after one little child, and the hunt would go on till she turned up and was asked where she had been, when she would innocently and nonchalantly say - visiting a friend in the neighbourhood.

 Once they needed quinine and they found the bottle empty, and couldn't figure out what had happened, till they asked her and she said she had eaten it - all. They were horrified and concerned until she told them why she had been able to eat it - she had simply spit out each tablet as soon as it was bitter. They found the little pile of spit out tablets just under the balcony, and were relieved.

 Her sister and a cousin of theirs who were same age usually shared housework - small jobs - and were friends and fought together, but the tow were one in not wishing to take the little sister out with them. She promised to be well behaved and then promptly cried and screamed and lay down on the floor when they were anywhere near something she found attractive - a doll in a window shop for instance. The two girls could neither stop her nor give her what she wanted and to add to it all were scolded roundly by passersby for making such a pretty little girl cry so heartbreakingly.

 (Years later Sgk did it to me - I was sent to school at the ripe age of five with two year old her in tow and frequently she brought me to tears, once by threatening to walk home without any pants and once by refusing to help me buckle my shoes while I held an ink-pot in one hand and a board in the other and schoolbag on my back; her logic was simple - I couldn't prove she would have my help except by doing it right then, and she undid her shoes; I came home in tears often. Of course her father and his relatives loved her and looked at me as a primary object of all possible torture. She was pretty and adorable too though not quite as spectacularly beautiful as our mother.)

 Eventually the six of them - my grandmother, her brother and her children - separated from the extensive family and lived elsewhere, the place where I spent much of my childhood. My mother went to school and was known in town - it was then a small town and everyone knew everyone else - and renowned as a beauty. Usually good-looking girls began to get married around fifteen and few went on to higher education, much less had a degree. Girls being educated was a matter then of waiting usefully until finding a groom. With her looks she was expected to marry before school was finished, and she could have if she thought of herself alone.

 She however went on to finish a degree in languages, teach physical education even as she was a student in the same college, got a job in a local government office and did a diploma in commerce while she was working. She wanted to repay the uncle - and her adopted father - for all the years of his working hard to support them; he was married while she was in college, and so were her siblings, one after another. They were now four people at home, she and the three I knew as my grandparents when I was an infant, a baby, a child in that house.

 She was pursued by an eligible man when she was finally convinced she has done enough and was ready to find someone to marry. Having been brought up in an atmosphere of light and love and joy and justice and caring, she did not know fear, she had been in home-guard during the WWII, and was good at marksmanship with rifles too, but human crookedness she was unfamiliar with and thought she could heal wounds with her love. She married, and was expecting to be happy.

 From that moment to when she was finally left without ability to carry on daily personal chores was a long journey consisting of trying to protect her children and to provide them with an atmosphere of love and caring and guidance to being good, and shielding them with her life. From a young woman with achievements and aspirations she transformed into a mother who had no protection as a wife, and did everything she could for children and the home she made for them.

 She cooked - or her mother did, sharing the work of caring and protecting us while she went out to work and bring in money (which he confiscated) - and provided us with a home of plenty while she worked. She brought clothes, and toys (which he confiscated and threw out into the drain out behind the yard), and did all shopping on foot even when he had a car. She told stories, sang, joked, and refused to abort the fourth child that his "friend" had advised him he should make her do. She stopped working when her youngest born was not so strong as his three elder siblings, and needed her care too.

 He - the husband, the father of the children was rarely help and often worked for the opposite purpose, and she had to undo the gloom and the terror unleashed before she could flood her children's life with gentle sunshine and cool breeze and some raindrops. Day after day, year after year, decade after decade.

 Her mother had been her sole support (since he had moved the family, while I was still very young, to another city far away, where she did not have the protection of society around as she had in the town she grew up in), and he knew it, so he heaped abuse on the old woman who kept a dignified silence and doggedly went on protecting her daughter and grandchildren, caring for them, cooking and washing. But then they - the couple - went abroad, and left children divided between two homes in the hometown. The younger two still had the care and protection of the grandmother who brought them up. It was another story in the other house.

 She had not been anything but tortured to see her mother not getting any of her dues after a life of worry and hard work, and her husband's behaviour had been atrocious, towards all of them. So finally she had decided to agree to his demands and leave her mother behind when they returned from abroad and took away the children back from hometown to the city of his career. Then on she had no protector, no support, not even a witness - no one would ask children or even believe them. She was beaten and starved and threatened with loss of her children's life and everything else that could make her survival possible. And she loved and worked through it to make their life possible and as happy, as full of light she had known, as she could make it. Certainly we would have been completely defenceless if she had left, and there would have been no joy.

 Later when I came across holocaust I understood much of it - we had lived in just such an atmosphere.

 It was a losing battle, and what was finally lost was her outer shell of a person, her ability to deal with people, with even every day chores, and finally her personal routine. Perhaps she simply did not wish to deal with the whole hell her life had become and had given up, or perhaps it is something beyond rational comprehension what was done to by him and his coterie. Certainly she had been pushed and beaten and starved into it and then left finally by the man who did it, while he went out to enjoy his life and find more prey, and continue the game of hunting defenceless humans.

 I had visited while still pursuing studies abroad and the first time I saw her in the condition was heartbreaking enough. She still spoke then occasionally, and once asked - why do you want to return?

 It was heartbreaking. How could I stay, where would I find work and a place to stay where I could take her away and care for her - I was not finished with qualifying degree yet and had only a temporary home abroad, and very little money.

 Certainly it would serve no purpose to be in his home and his power again just so he could finish his vendetta and beat, humiliate and throw me out again this time publicly with a huge spectacular show arranged by him put up for the purpose. (He did manage to do all of that, and far worse - but she was gone before that. She had shielded me with her life.)

 So I gently said, if I don't return, how would I study? And having been aspiring herself - she had finished a postgraduate degree in a new subject when I was one year old, while working to support her mother and me - she knew what I was going through, and said - how wonderful it must be to be able to study!

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