Goodbye Ma....

I was 22 years old when I met Ma. I walked into her life fully formed and all grown up physically like that guy in the Mahabharat who is born fully formed to his Mom. She hated me on sight;told me so in so many words when we graduated to talking for long periods of time, sharing insights and laughter and ginger tea on cloudy days in her airconditioned living room. I was fresh out of college, cocksure and swaggering with self importance, too full of myself to realise that I could be wrong.

Ma was, is the daughter and the wife of a Civil servant. Born to order and good living, the eldest of two daughters, she and I have a lot in common - A love of books, baking, crockery and glassware, the ability to see beyond the outer shell of a person, good judges of charachter, the ability to adopt people and make them ours, to see life as it is, the inability to pass by something beautiful without admiring it, an inherent admiration for exquisite enbroidery, a love for the color black and exquisite raw silks, a sibling that we've mothered, the inability to put ourselves first, the ability to look after any and everything that god puts in our path, people around us who are intensely jealous of our bonding and a sense of personal space that does not allow us to transgress certain boundaries in other people's lives, a work ethic that leaves no room for sloppiness and is hinged on perfection - we share all this and much more.

It was this basis of commonalities that allowed us to settle into a comfortable, asexual relationship that we gave the conventional tag of Mother - Son or as I put it Mother - Daughter because she already had two sons and I didn't want to share that space, I wanted to be special.

It was not easy coming to that stage. We started working together in the HR Department of the Engineering college that we worked for - she as the head of that department and I as an entry level professor. Academic life was not without its ups and downs and all I knew was based on my perceptions as a student. Although she hated me on first sight, she recognised me for what I really was at that time - a directionless kid with tremendous potential and a huge bundle of good intentions with which I was paving my path to hell.

She decided to take me in hand and gradually under her tutelage I grew - my natural talents sharpened and polished under her artistic ability to bring out the best in people and hone it while at the same time minimising their drawbacks making me into a better person.

Somewhere along the way she grew to like me and more than that - trust me. And I? I loved her from the beginning. Loved her with the adulation that only sons can have for their mothers and no other woman comes close. I had lost my birth mother a long time ago, so long ago that her memory only lives in the smell of my perspiration, my inability to speak my mind at crucial times, my love for method and order, my talent for embroidery and my eyes that are so like hers that my father finds it diffcult to meet them for fear of finding her reproach in them. My sister was happily married and my sense of duty and my experiences over the years had made me wiser - I seldom touched her circle of perfection, I had no right to.

But Ma? I loved her, still do. My actions hitherto unchecked were scrutinised to ensure that I didn't fall in her estimation, I redoubled all my efforts to be what she wanted me to be and more.

Two years of trying got me into a B - School and another two struggle filled years when her love and affection in the form of moral support, pep talks and food kept me going I landed a job On Campus. She was thrilled. But at the same time I had to move out of J----r. I hated Delhi. I'd call her and cry. She'd be stern and soft in equal measure reinstilling my faith in myself and my abilities. She was my anchor of goodness in a strange environment where I could not help but bang against meanness no matter how hard I tried. For the last few years I had a place to call home, a place where I'd find myself and someone who'd talk - we loved each other's company.

In Ma's beautifully apportioned drawing room, we found the time and space to be ourselves, to talk about any and everything, to re-evaluate our lives and find the strength to go in the other's solidarity. I spilled all my secrets in that room - the saree I embroidered for my sister when my nephew was born, my love for a girl who could never love me back, my hopes, my fears and my dreams.

That beautifully lit room with it's silk drapes and crystal ornaments is as familiar to me as my own hand, each little change that she made I'd appreciate and assimilate. I still conjure it up and the most important thing I can still see is her - tall, dignified, regal, unruffled, and always willing to listen.

Gradually the good times rolled by - enough money for my needs and wants and still some left over for my friends and family. On one of my last trips to J----r, I saw a beautiful raw silk saree - black with exquisite silver paisleys - her favorite print and I bought it for her. I felt good knowing that I had finally got it right.

I should have seen it coming, I should have known that my fate does not allow for the presence of a mother in my life. My Nani told me long ago. One day not long after I had presented her with the saree, she sent me an email teling me that there was now no need for us to stay in touch, a short email - exactly six lines long. Ironical. This June we would have known each other for six years in the parlance of physical time although I always felt like I'd known her forever.

There were times like when we went to the IIFT this winter when other women would stop her and say enviously, "I wish my son were more like yours!" She'd swell with pride and I? I'd feel finally like I belonged somewhere, like I had an identity, a heritage,a home. We'd planned to go again next year, I don't know if I will.

I was eight years old, standing beside my mother's funeral pyre when I last felt this lost. When I set it afire I felt that I was burning much more than my mother's body. I was sure that I'd never feel like that again. I was wrong. I felt the same way reading Ma's email, lost, abandoned, cast adrift.

I'm older, stronger and wiser now. I'm 28. Yet I feel like an eight year old standing beside a funeral pyre willing a dead body to come alive. But I still have the strength to say - Goodbye Ma and thanks for showing me what it's like to have a mother. Thanks for all the memories......

Rain - a modified version that I submitted for a contest

I was running against time when it hit me. A whiff of breeze that carried with it a medley of fragrances - wet earth, rain kissed leaves, floral nectar and much more, an indefinable scent that an attarwala in Hyderabad claims to have replicated – the aroma of rain.

I don’t remember when the irritation of being caught in a downpour gave way, but I remember what I felt - pure joy as my haste evaporated along with my anger.

The first few rain drops were like gentle caresses that loosened the knot of hurt in me and then it beat down harder demanding that my tears be released. I was glad to let go. It gently ruffled my hair and slowly seeped into my very soul.

When it gently left, I felt renewed; whole again, as if the rain had filled in the gaps.

I was, I still am, amazed.

Fear

She walks down the hallway. Slowly, hesistantly as if her life is slowly draining out of her as she takes each step. Her mouth is dry, her palms slick with sweat. The folder she grips in her hands almost slips as she walks.

She catches sight of herself, as she walks, in the polished reflection of a doorway and sees not the beauty that others appreciate, but a too thin, too artificial young woman who looks old. She sees only the flaws, not the perfections. The sum of the parts of the whole are not known to her, all she sees, all she can see, are the flaws, the incompleteness of being that in her eyes defines her.

She takes a deep breath to calm herself, suppresses a feeling of being weightless and jagged, a sense of light headed-ness that threatens to make her fall and stumble.

As she walks further it seems to her that she has bitten off much more than she can chew this time, she will not find any solace in her own self, she will not be her own person, she will continue to be someone whom she despises and despises with all her soul.

Each breath catches in the back of her throat, each word she so carefully rehearsed this morning, what she would say, each gesture she has practised in front of the bathroom mirror is slowly slipping through the grasp of her conciousness as surely as sand slips through an hour glass, marking the passage of time.

She pauses in front of the door that she knew she would have to enter. Her stiff cold fingers and clammy palm belie the confident expression she pastes on her face. She knocks out of sheer habit and waits.

"Come in please." - Says the calm confident voice at the other end. She grasps the doorknob with the finality of someone grasping a life line. As she swings open the door and enters, she can hear that slow intake of breath, the spark of interest that her presence in strange company is de rigeur. She now walks more confidently, sensing with her huntress' instinct that her lithe figure, long legs, lush brown hair and blue eyes have done their bit. Now all she needs to do is charm the idiot behind the desk. "That should not be diffcult." she thinks.

As she reaches the chair she can see her fear out of the corner of her eye, that living breathing entity that always makes her life hell in a run up to something important.

She watches with satisfaction as it curls up on itself and pretends to die. It will be back, but untill then.....And she smiles even more widely as the interview begins...