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!!
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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…
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…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 !