An unfulfilled Aastha of Mamta

I am Mamta…don’t know if the name had any meaning…mamta had to be related to a mother’s love. I had a mother but love?

Before my birth I had an elder brother. …I have heard, when he was born my grandmother kept him, and returned my mother back…when mother again somehow returned back, I was born and this time not only mom but even I was returned back to my grandma’s place… ..after having been harassed for long, maa could not bear things anymore, every now and then she would be thrown back….this time she decided not to return…

So I was brought up at grandmother’s place only.
There were my other cousins too. ..My grandma lived at one of the metros so my cousins had come to study their college there.
The eldest bhaiya was 17 years elder to me. I spent my childhood there, when I was 2yrs bhaiya would punish me for leaving food. He understood the hardships we were living in.
It was an emergency period…….even after having applied at so many places; he couldn’t get a job because his results were delayed.
By the time I grew up, my cousins got married……I was the youngest there at grandma’s place …with time cousins ,the only ones I could have called a brother or a sister had settled, they became busy in their own lives…
I took care of my widowed grandmother, my paralytic mother who couldn’t take the grief which had overcome her. I never saw of my father and he never wanted to see me….but my uncle was a teacher( a learned man in those days), he understood things…he was guilty for what his brother had been to his wife and daughter…he would secretly come and meet me, and offer gifts, it was his way of repenting of not having stopped his brother….grandmother abused him whenever he came to the house, the cousins abused him…when I went to his house( the father’s family) abused my mother…. While I was young, no one cared if I had a childhood to live…no one was to blame and no one was to be questioned… all of them were struggling, fighting and righteous in their own positions. …

I thought I would study, I would be independent, I would earn for myself, for my mother. I would support my grandmother who was working for me even at this age….
The day would make me busy in the household chores and in the night I would study…
I studied hard, cleared two entrance for bank P.O.s..a big achievement those days…

As I returned back home seeing my result at the rozgaar vibhaag……a loud voice stopped me at the stairs…
Who could it be? Grandmother had become too weak…mom? Was there a guest??

“So what do you think, upon the suggestion?”--- A loud male voice

“Anyways we brought up your girl, we were the ones who did everything for her”…a voice just loud enough to be barely heard spoke.

“We did everything, it is your girl too, and why should we bear all the expense? Now it’s your turn. Take her with you. Let your family also understand the expenses of keeping a girl…… see the boy and decide what you are doing about her.
Her mother is unable to move, and I am now too old to carry the burden anymore”.

So it was decided, I was to move with my chacha (my uncle, the only person in the other home who cared if I was alive or dead)

Tears flowed down my eyes, sobbing I entered the house…..it was me who was Mamta, and it was my mamta which I showered to my mother…and today I knew I was a burden, I didn’t belong to the place I was fed through…

Without questioning, I moved with uncle….my sudden new family had to bear me now. They had searched a groom for me in a small village. …But my new grandmother at father’s place was concerned if I would run away and not adjust in the family as my mother did at her place….she claimed!!
………………………………………………………………………………….
Me…Mamta, I was wedded in a village, where there were no roads. …. I couldn’t give the interviews… my brothers and sisters with whom I was brought up were no where to be seen…my mother was nowhere, my kanyadaan was done by my father and step mother(new parents to my life.)…my grandmother, the lady who would walk with a stick was probably unable to make it here…..

…….”The family” cottage was big ….the family had 18 people in all. There was work, there were cows to be mowed, cow dung to be put in this new home, there wasn’t electricity in the village for twelve hours a day….but this was my home, a home where I belonged to…the home where roles of each person was played according to the characters…
.
…the day I held my girl in my hands I made a resolution to myself, I would make the meaning of mamta true to her. I wouldn’t let her live a name she would question all her life…when I took the little angel in my hands. ….I knew she was “Aastha”…aastha ,who was mine, who would live life for me, who would break the wires around the village ..…who would stand on her legs, who would be independent, who would have a home for herself here with me…and when she would break the walls here, she would make a platform there in the world outside!!!

But the destiny was planned, and may be mamta was misplaced…..when my Aastha was of 24 days, maa became serious….I brought her at “my family” …grandma had left me sometime back…..and maa was broken all the more. Her half paralyzed body became motionless….if there were red ants on her hand, she could not pick up her hand and remove them. She could not raise a voice to alarm us. She would keep bearing till someone saw her and relieved her of the pain. I could care for her, only in the last 6 months ...when I saw her dying each day!

My mamta was growing, when did Aastha became 6 months old, I never knew.
Little mamta didn’t know that the bigger mamta of “Mamta” was there for few days
…all she knew was her mamta was taken up by her garndmaa….who would do nothing, lie still, but take away her time which was there for her mamta….when she started crawling, she would push maa and make her fall…maa kept moaning in pain, till I saw her and helped her out.. ..I tried giving myself to the unfulfilled and the forthcoming mamta….

And today I find myself bare, bare by the wave of an empty mamta…of a paralytic mother and a young daughter…I don’t know if my mamta failed,but certainly it was delayed… and it seems having been a fight to make the mamta in me meaningful !

An apology

Don’t know what makes me write this, when I strongly feel like leaving the idea right now. There’s a feeling within which says I am wrong this time, wrong to put something like this in words ,which should have stayed inside….am desperately fighting within when I pen this down, and am not sure when I’ll leave the script and would let it go incomplete….there is something which makes me feel like a criminal within….


Today I needed to accompany someone to a condolence because a driver was needed and I was the option available. Though I didn’t like the idea, I felt myself very much helpless at such occasions, may be it was my inability to accept the realities the world gave when someone who was yours, someone whom you kept close left someday with non hopes of ever returning back…..and even when “the person” wasn’t close the people whom the dead left made you feel helpless...today, the deceased wasn’t someone I was connected to, she was just a distant relative. So, I tried negotiating if I could just be a driver and wait outside while she completed the societal norms, but my attempts were a total failure…
Went there, while we were struggling to find the house, going back and forth ,zig zag in the lanes ..We could hear something loud, and it made us identify the place we were supposing to!

At the entrance on left I could see a table with a white sheet on it and some red boxes piled on top of each other, right side had another similar table this time with some glasses on it and a big kit, which I read BISLERI…
Suddenly someone pushed me, as I stood up again the person apologized and hurried within with a plastic bag, which had coke,pepsi,mirinda bottles in it….as these were not my concern, I went to the place I was destined for.

I took off my sleepers as everyone did and found a space. Though I didn’t know what should be my behavior, I was ascertained there would be nothing wrong in keeping mum. I sat down, in between people. Right in front there was a stage with a red carpet and three people on it. In the middle sat a female in a white kurtee with minimum makeup(apt for the occasion with a laptop in front. person on left was on a tabla and the right one held a synthesizer …probably this was the orchestra for the evening. The female sung two bhajans for the rested soul, then she recited “gayatri mantras”, which hold special significance in our hindu culture…as I was engrossed in it…she looked for a signal to a man again in white kurtee(the son of the deceased),this time the kurtee had kashmiree work on it, and he signaled her to sing something more….she continued..
Just next to me was a young boy probably 17 yr old, who was the grandchild of the dead soul….in a chicken kurta and jeans he held his handicam in hand, and was trying to shoot the orchestras, the photo frame of her grandmother, which was nicely decorated with red roses around….

a couple beside me, were in there finest clothes, certainly in whites...the female wore diamond sets apt with the white bordered zarii kurtee...probably gold didn’t went with it!

As my eyes moved around the white tent I sat there was something suffocating about the atmosphere, when suddenly the mike was taken up my a man who wore yellow for a change ,I expected some real “uthavnaa” rituals from him. but the mike was handed over to someone who talked nice things about the soul as if his speech was preplanned, and requested everyone present not to leave without taking the Prasad!

While mineral water was continually being served, the red boxes (conating laddus{the actual ritual }+ some baked biscuits,{ may be the onset of the culture we were heading to})were served which had a label of one the 3 stars in the city.
As I wanted to move out quickly, someone at the gate handed over to me a card, the card read…
.”My mom was a great female,
She loved….

……………………………..
I thank you all for coming here and making an effort to be little my sorrow”.


I don’t know if my acceptability to the life’s biter truth increased over the loss. But certainly if this was the society, which was worse then the TV daily soaps …...where children called an orchestra as a condolence, they made sure of the best fabrics even in such a situation.
At the second day of death, they wanted to wrap up things because “chautha “ and “terahvi” which hold some significance demanded time and the children were busy.
Then certainly I feel am better off not knowing the norms of such a society, and if this is one of the kind, I am a rebel.
I apologize to the soul, if anything by me has hurt her!