Many things – events and incidents in life, cannot be shared with most others. I want to share one such incident here. But let me introduce myself to you first. My name is Ron Banerjee. I was born in a reputed family of Bengal. In Spite of being a member of a large family, there were things about me that even my close people did not get to know. Anyway, it’s best not to talk about my superstitious beliefs and the price I had to pay at times.
Let me also tell you that I have been an extremely hot-headed, emotional, superstitious fellow all my life. When Tendulkar or Gavaskar before him was playing, I wouldn’t move an inch! If I happened to see the face of a person I disliked the first thing in the morning, and if my day turned out to be a downer as a result, I would try not to come anywhere near her/him, especially in the morning, as far as practicable!
I also tried to read meanings into things where there shouldn’t have been any at all in the first place. And I had this belief that girls all over the world were crazy for me. In fact, I remember the day when I was introduced to chubby, lovey-dovey Shilpi for the first time. She was in the second year of college and already had a boyfriend. My friend, a common friend of Shilpi and I, introduced us to one another just outside the college gate. She was a stunner though a bit on the roundish side. We had some puchkas from a roadside vendor, laughing all the while over meaningless things. After she had left and gone back inside the college (it was a girls’ college), my friend turned towards me and said:
“Isn’t it sad that good-looking lasses get paired up fast?”
I quipped immediately,” Don’t worry. She won’t be after this meeting with us.” I don’t know what happened to Shilpi finally but she did get married to a decent man.
Anyway, to come back to the story. It happened like this:
My Ma, in her late seventies, who had been sick for some time, was admitted to Peerless Hospital. On reaching there one afternoon, we were told that her condition had improved unimaginably and she was going to be shifted to the General Ward (from the ICU) the next day.
Naturally, most of my siblings, their spouses and children were eager to visit her the next day. As I was getting ready to leave, one of my sisters-in-law staying in the same ancestral house, wanted to accompany me to the hospital to meet Ma. As I was waiting downstairs for her to alight, her husband was heard remarking:
“Why are you taking her, Ronny? It would have been better had you decided not to…” In my spare time, I have often wondered about the significance of his remark at that time. Why did he tell me something like that? Did he know that if anything untoward happened to Ma, his wife would have been the scapegoat?
Whatever, we reached the hospital in time to find out that Ma had already been shifted down to the General Ward. As we entered the Ward and proceeded to her bed, I found Ma already sitting up, her legs folded, being surrounded on both sides by a host of our relatives. Ma looked happy, though worn out. She could recognise most of the relatives and that was a good sign. Then she turned her eyes towards us ( the sister-in-law, who accompanied me, and I were on the left side of her bed). She first looked at me with that broad smile on her face.
“Tell me, Ma, who am I?” I asked jokingly.
“Don’t I know you? How can that be?” She answered me with her characteristic wit. She next shifted her gaze from me to the boudi (sister-in-law) staying behind.
The very next moment, something inexplicable happened. Ma, who had looked absolutely normal till then, was caught up in a bout of quacking all of a sudden, making queer faces, turning her face this side and that. She, having had her head lowered on the pillow by then, tried raising a finger towards the relative and her whole body started quacking like a chicken with its severed head! With her unseeing eyes looking up in our direction or at the area a little above our shoulders, to be more precise; her teeth clenched; she made a bizarre sight. She had to be immediately rushed back up to the ICU. She passed away the next morning.
Now, I have always had this feeling that people closest to us, at the time of their demise, try to convey some life-enriching messages to the near and dear ones being left behind.
So, now whenever I think about Ma’s recovery that afternoon, her tremors and convulsions and her subsequent transfer to the ICU, I feel that Ma’s final message to me was to keep a safe distance from this sister-in-law of mine. And when you are against someone, with your heart and soul, circumstances will seemingly cooperate to help you find many faults with her. Let me try to make it clearer to you with an example.
Suppose you help someone financially when he is hospitalized, in his death-bed. Now, long after his death, his wife comes to your room and says :
“I didn’t know about all this.”
“About what ALL THIS?” I act naive.
“That you gave us a loan at the time of your brother’s death.”
“It wasn’t a loan. He did teach me in my childhood. So, it was some kind of repaying the debt.” I answer nonchalantly.
“No, no, no. Listen to your elder, Ronny. Please don’t argue with me. Now that my son is earning well, let me give the money back to you.”
Because I had stopped thinking good of her a long time back, I replied,” How much more can you degrade me, Boudi? What did I do to deserve such unfair treatment from you all?”
(That sounded very dramatic even to me!)
You see, she might have had a point there to try to give back the money but I was adamant thinking of the final signal conveyed by my late Ma at the time of her death.
I could never be comfy with that boudi of mine from then on. I wanted to share this with a close few. But I felt that it would not be appropriate or wise. So, I kept it a secret to myself. I quarrelled with her time and again over trivials, mostly about the tap and running water. What I felt was her arrogance, self-centeredness and stubbornness.
This Boudi of mine has been gone from my life for the last two years or more. She has been staying with her son lately in his residence. He has bought an apartment somewhere in North Kolkata. I have no intention of visiting her yet. But on days like this when I have time to ponder things over, I think of her. I realise that my late Ma could never have left me with such a painful parting message of hating somebody. She was too good a human being to do so even at the time of her sickness, at the time of having her one foot implanted in the grave!
If it was not Ma, it must have been my mind playing tricks, provoking, reading between the lines for the non-existent meaning to hate this Boudi!
You can be rude and mean and outright selfish to your elders. Being your elders, they will forgive you. But what about the young ones in the family? My nephew was extremely educated with a scholarly bent of mind. When I was raising hell, giving a piece of my mind to Boudi, my nephew decent to a T, did not come out to fight for his mother though he loved his widowed mother a great deal.
In his place, I would have stirred up a mayhem, haranguing the one who tried to pick up a fight with Ma!
And let me make one thing clearer here. The fact that mothers, regardless of their status, caste, creed, age are the epitome of selflessness, sacrifice and sanity all over. And no one has the right to besmear them, point a finger at them in this God’s universe.
My nephew never came out to fight against me for daring to defame his mother. He must have been saddened, pained hearing the choicest epithets I used for his mother
I wish I knew of some other ways of keeping a distance from her rather than picking up on her at every conceivable opportunity. I am overcome with a strong sense of remorse at times described above.
The end
