Hey! Man I want to go.... :))

Two calls.
And I was swept away through the tidal waves of Time into an era that belonged to the foregone Century. There was this unstoppable-never-before urge to relive Childhood. Every moment precious, as it were, and so without the slightest alteration to it.
It was not the first time that I was experiencing an emotional upsurge threatening to do a cloud-burst in my eyes! And yet this was different.

The first call was from a cousin who I knew existed somewhere in Goa. In the long span of time that had separated us I had got a couple of fleeting updates. I knew just a few things about her like she had lost her husband years ago and that her sons were either studying or working abroad. But I had no idea she had a daughter too, who was married and now moved back to Goa with her husband to be close to Mommy. Although I had never seen her children, my mind started weaving their pictures.
Among the images that my heart and mind have stored together there is a vividly clear portrait of this cousin. Without much thought I gave her face to her daughter.

The last time I had seen her, my cousin must have been almost as old as her daughter is now. Her lovely radiant smile showing a perfect set of pearly teeth, the magnificent kundan jewellery adding glow to her already beaming countenance, her phirozi gharara, kurta and dupatta embellished with sequins, lachkas and gotas, the merrily jingling phirozi glass bangles worn with exquisite kundan kangans. And not to forget those lovely rings on her long fair fingers !!!
That was at some family celebration in our native town in Uttar Pradesh years and years and years back.

Now as her voice touched my ears, I tried to imagine her in person. It was a voice that I had  forgotten over the years , and , yet strangely enough it was a voice I felt pleasantly comfortable with. Although all my efforts to put a face or a personality to that voice now proved  fruitless , I knew the voice and the person deep inside my heart ....it was a voice that seemed very much my own.

After the call ended I felt as if  a small part of my past that had drifted away had found its way back to me.
And that should have made me happy. But queerly the feeling deep within me was that of an undefinable emptiness and longing.

The other call was from a dear old friend. She is someone who has been there for me whenever I needed a true friend. We had met in school...Class three to be precise, when my father was transferred from a place in Raigad district to a place in Thane district in Maharashtra. Her father worked for the Birlas. Mine for the Tatas. And in their professional capacities they often met each other, while we girls met in the class every day. Little wonder then that our mothers have been friends too ever since.
We have seen a lot of this world together.

This friend had now called me to share a sad news. Her father had passed away a day before.
Slowly in a controlled voice she gave me the details while I mumbled the customary words of condolence.
Oh! Come on...what was I doing?
She is so close to me, I can feel her pain as my own and yet it seemed I was being perfunctory in expressing my grief.
Deep inside I could feel my tears. I wanted to cry and cry and cry...
But the fact is no words could express my pain.

In everyone's life there are certain things and people whose presence one takes for granted. Life without them is unimaginable. When my father passed away three years back, I could not come to terms with the fact for quite sometime. But being too numb with shock, in a state of trance I sailed through the tragedy with apparent ease. Friends and relatives were surprised to see how "brave" I had been in my "composure", displaying a rare calm that seemingly comes when one entrusts oneself entirely to God.
But I know I am not such a sagaciously detached soul.

While on this call I was reminded of my own loss. slowly I began to realise that with my father a part of my childhood had also died. There was no numbness now as I clearly remembered my late father. They say time heals all wounds. Then how could I still feel the pain as if of a wound that was still raw.
Of loss that was irreparable?

I had never cared for the proverbial bachpan-ke-din to come back.
Never lived in the past.
Never tried to hold back and cling on to memories.

But now suddenly it dawned upon me that my childhood is far too beautiful and invaluable for me to let it just go away. I want to cling on to all those memories, and hold back Time in my tightly clenched fists.

I want to go back...really earnestly...to my bachpan-ke-din... to the time
"when getting high meant swinging,
when drinking ended up with CocaCola bottles,
when Dad was the only hero,
when love was Mom's hug,
when Dad's shoulder was the highest place on this planet,
when one's siblings were one's 'worst enemies'
when my dolls were hand-made by my granny (exclusively for me)
when in hot summer afternoons we sneaked out to collect wild berries and jungle-jalebis in our embroidered cotton frocks and sat on the verandah steps to "divide the booty without cheating !!!"
when behind Mummy's back my sister and I would explore her wardrobe for silk saris and shaneel blouses
when marriage meant gudiya-gudde-ki-shaadi
when one could sleep without a worry in the world,
when all the phones were landline
when the only thing that hurt were skinned knees
when the only things broken were toys
And
when goodbyes were only till tomorrow............."

Mothers Day Musings

I just cannot get her out of my mind. That sweet little girl.
How old must she be...?
Two ... three ... not more in any case.
Very fair, shoulder-length curly golden hair, but rather unkempt and disorganized. She was dressed in a pink top and jeans.

It was a usual evening at Joggers Park. The place was full of people taking their routine rounds of evening walk, children playing about going up and down the slides, and some smaller ones watching ducks swimming gracefully in the little pond. The sea shimmered as the setting sun, all of glorious orange, cast its glow in that unending mass of water, while the crows kept flying to and from it with their catch of "seafood"!!!

She was the only lonely child out there I think. And precisely therefore I could not take my eyes off her. She was accompanied by a neat shalwar-kameez clad woman in her twenties, whose well-oiled hair was tied in a thick black plait, eyes kajal-ed, she was toying with a mobile phone. Plenty of green bangles jingling away as she gestured with her hands while talking to a young man standing near her.
She was undoubtedly the ayah.
Whoever was the young man should have been none of my concerns.

But it seems my traditional narrow-mindedness had taken over too soon as the thought of these two having an affair crossed my mind!
Even if they were not having one, the manner in which they were neglecting the child irritated me.

I saw the little one tugging at her ayah's dupatta with whatever force her small hands could muster and gesturing lovingly to sit next to her. But the ayah was so thoughtlessly unmindful. She did not as much as even look at the lovely little girl.

Although quite inavertently, I was now looking hard at them. The ayah I'm sure had a strong sixth sense. Suddenly she looked at me in the eyes. I took her stare blandly.
For a moment she seemed to flinch.
Then she hurriedly shifted her gaze to the little girl.
And as an after-thought, pressed a few buttons on the cell phone (I'm still not sure if she was faking!!!)
Giving the handset to the child, she said " Mummy se baat karo, Baby!"
It was more than apparent that there was no response from the other side.

In another diametrically opposite incident, I saw a young female labourer managing to snatch a few minutes from her hard working schedule, to feed her infant and put him to sleep. It may be quite another thing that she had to put the semi-naked child to sleep on a soiled piece of cloth on the pavement near a pile of stinking slush and dirt that had been freshly dug out from the gutter running alongside as "operation-clean-gutters" reached its peak. The child slept blissfully under a shady tree while the mother went back to work under the open sky, blistering harsh sun mercilessly beating down. Drops of sweat running in a stream down her pale skinny body, but a strange expression of contentment beautifying her simple unadorned face.

Certainly that miserable labourer had never heard of a day called The Mother's Day.
But surely the Super-Mom of that little Princess I saw at Joggers Park knows all about Mother's Day.

I had been forever convinced that as a woman, a woman can be good or bad, but as a Mother, a woman is forever goodness personified.
But a very famous film maker with whom I had interacted online had told me quite adamantly that mothers could also be bad.

His words came back to me and without being judgemental, this Mother's Day I am inclined to believe that perhaps Mothers could be classified too.

The Poor Mothers who had just one day in the whole year to call her own.
And the Rich Mothers who are a Mother all 365 days of the year...