An Ode to a Woman I Loved

A couple of weeks ago, when I'd called up somebody, who had taken a lady I deeply loved, to the hospital, I was expecting the call to be along the lines of how it was a minor health-scare but nothing 'serious'.

A deeply pained, but calm, voice spoke about his wife of over 41 years, "Kanna, amma is no more." (Son, your mother is no more).

I remember my hands were shaking and I felt as if my mind was running in a million directions and my body wanted to keep pace with my mind. Yet, my hands were shaking. A 'simple' task of dialling a number seemed hard. Over the phone, I conveyed the message to a few people concerned, calmly, but I was still not in 'control' of my physical self - I was still shaking.

Over the course of next few days, I saw various friends and relatives recall different anecdotes with her, recall traits my mother had, ethics & moral code she upheld, how she influenced their lives, the various incidents in her life (as narrated by them) that influenced her, her general positive/upward looking attitude to life etc.

Some, I knew, some I didn't; some hagiographic; some more 'realistic'. But it was uniformly positive.

They recounted how she had chided a shorter guy in the '70s to marry a much taller woman (she was from the girl's side), dismissing his reservations against the concept. How she'd been like a mother to a 20 something relative (about 5 years younger to her) in giving encouragement to pursue a particular career. How she gave the confidence to a professionally accomplished (and aged above 50) woman the confidence to stand-up to her mother-in-law. How she had battled multiple (at least 4 - as per various accounts) instances of serious medial near death situations (of greater than 20% probability of death) through willpower and personal discipline. How she had helped a (then) acquaintance (they used to share the same bus on their way to work) during a major life-threatening accident that the lady encountered. How, the day before she died, she had travelled about 20kms to wish somebody luck and offer prayers before he travelled to another city for his own heart check-up. How, about 2 hours before her medical time of death, she wished somebody's son speedy recovery as the child had been in hospital recently. There is probably some sense of irony somewhere there (or is it appropriately?) that my mother eventually succumbed to a cardiac arrest caused by breathlessness.

However, that is not how I remember her. How I do remember her is as a mother, who while being traditional, religious, and spiritual, allowed the freedom to her children to have their own answers to these questions. It was okay to be atheistic, omnivorous, epicurean living even if each of those was against her personal code. It was okay to not want to contribute to any kind of community or social service (something she herself devoted some amount of her energies to). 

However, it was NOT okay to not be a 'good' person (broadly, non-assholic, helping at least when asked of etc.). It was NOT okay to disrespect people for their caste (unlike many others of her age/context, she didn't keep separate utensils for the maid and for herself), economic background (waiters, taxi/auto drivers, e.g.), gender (she inculcated a fair bit of feminist concepts in me and my brother through childhood). It was also NOT okay to take oneself/anything too seriously - she cracked period jokes, gramnazi jokes, jokes on old age, jokes on death ("XYZ ka toh ek paanv kabr mei hai," was a frequent refrain used within the family).

She was a proper liberal in a true sense of the word - having her own beliefs but no/very few 'holy cows' that were 'off limits' of discussions for us (S. P. Balasubrahmanyam was an exception and a holy cow off limits for jokes though). She aimed to solve things through dialogue and resorting to a call to her authority only when absolutely essential and in rare cases.

She derived simple pleasures in life. She liked speaking with people. She liked contributing more to any given group than taking from it - and boy was she part of multiple groups and communities! She liked smiling (except, not so much for photographs - she doesn't have the face for it to be framed, she sometimes joked). She liked being 'in' with the times - using and recharging her own ola/uber accounts, spending hours on Quora instead of Whatsapp or Facebook (Okay, well she did spend hours on Facebook too), using Youtube to watch her shows. She took pride in her planning skills, organising abilities, and initiative taking (+ leadership in general) ability and rightly so. Her high-standards of expectations on timely planning remained a source of friction with my typically laid-back attitude to getting stuff done.

I am glad I was able to express, as it turned out to be, some 48 hours before her death, how much she (and my dad) were responsible for many of my brother and my good traits and our respective vices were our own choosing. How both of us were lucky and sheltered to have been brought up the way we were.

I mentioned how about 24 hours before her death, she had travelled 20kms odd. And, I guess that's how it was meant to be - as a stroke of randomness that ended a life - relatively painlessly, leaving behind a fairly impressive (to me, anyway!) number of well-wishers who were glad to have known her.

To a Woman, I didn't know I loved as much as I think I did.