When she looks into the mirror she sees her mother. She peers close and observes that a grey hair streaks across the dull brown hair. She dolefully observes that she is greying at the same place that her mother greyed. Buy her mother greyed after she crossed fifty, and the black lustrous hair was so thick that it could not be enclosed in the palm. Her own hair is thinning near the forehead - though just forty she feels fifty. Her complexion has attained placid wheat brown as against her mother’s glorious golden colour; her features once sharp are smudged by the onset of middle age. The melancholy dip of her eyes while in deep thought is from her mother.
She stands at the mirror in the bathroom to catch the glimpse of her mother and hold her there. She has not let her mother go, her mother has so insidiously settled in her memory and the subconscious that she never got up in the mornings alone. Her mother woke up with her and she experienced the gentle breath and warmth of her mother when she cradled herself in the large rocking chair to read a book. Now her double - her mother - has moved to the apparent level. She sees her double, her mother, in the contours of her face and in every curve of her body.
So much has her mother coalesced with her that she does not see where one ends and the other begins. She closes her eyes and the wooden door of her mother’s parental home opens in her mind. She lives her mother’s life; her mind maps the landscape of her mother’s childhood in Mylapore.
I remember vividly the Sunday when I went to see the movie Superman Returns with my son and my husband. It was a deceptively serene Sunday in retrospective now. It was the week that my father returned from the hospital. He had been in the hospital for four weeks and had come home on Wednesday. He was my Superman because I have seen him pick his health through those four weeks from sheer immobility after a nasty fall and dip in Sodium levels to the state of being able to move about and take care of his simple needs. I believed that my Superman has returned – returned to listen to music, to discuss with me theoretical aspects of Carnatic music and goad me read the meanings of Thiagaraja kritis. There were hiccups of course – his mind did not gather strength the way his body did. I really was not alarmed, it seemed that it was just a matter of time before he could be put on the positive path of good health and spirit.
I settled to the comforting presence of having my father back home. He was up in the morning at the dining table to drink his steaming mug of Horlicks. Then he was helped to have a shave and a bath. He emerged out of his room at 8 o’clock wearing a fresh veshti, vibhuti marking his forehead. He had his breakfast of idlis or pongal. He walked for a while and sat in the sitting room observing the morning bustle as my husband left for work. After the cook left and the silence settled in the house, he listened to music. I left late for work after spending some time with him. I recounted every day to the attendant looking after him to give my father soup, kanji, fruits and food at the right time. My mental clock was set to my father’s dietary routine. I called at 11 o’clock to check if my father had his soup, at 12 o’clock to enquire if he enjoyed his lunch, at 3 o’clock to remind that it was time for his kanji and at 4 o’clock to instruct the attendant to wash the apples before slicing and serving them to my father.
In the evenings he greeted me with “Good evening”, at the sitting room. I would come home to find him chatting up with my mother-in-law. I would sit with him and listen to music for an hour. A late evening walk, physiotherapy and dinner ended his healthily orchestrated day. He had problems sleeping on certain nights and there were nights that he slept peacefully. Life, I thought was getting on smooth tracks after the bumpy ride of four weeks in the hospital.
Hence I was delighted when I got three free tickets for the movie Superman Returns. We needed a treat for all the good things happening around us. Reliance had chosen us as one of the best customers and in appreciation offered free tickets for the family. Why wouldn’t we top the list of best customers? We after all had three Reliance phones in the family and the bill for each reached a couple of thousands! My son was delighted, and we were going to theatre to see a movie after a long time. It was too good to be true as the movie was released only on Friday and my husband suspected it was some practical joke played on us: “Wait for the tickets first,” he said. The couriered tickets reached us on Saturday. My son announced the good news to his friends. He was proud that he was the first student in his class to see the movie, that too just two days after its release.
I spoke to my father about the movie, explained why the movie was special. I told him that it is a sequel to the movie ‘Superman’, and that the sequel has come after a long gap. I told him about the belief that those who donned Superman’s role were believed to be ill fated. I narrated about the fatal accident sustained by Christopher Reeves who played the lead role in the movie Superman, how he was paralyzed and immobilized, his long drawn battle and how he died tragically last year. I told him that the new movie is actually a brave attempt meant to disprove the belief that Supermen are not lucky. I told him that the new Superman would do well.
Just as we were leaving, I looked up at the bookshelf for the tickets; I had put them there. The tickets weren’t there. I remembered taking the tickets to show them to my husband. I couldn’t recollect what happened after that. My husband said that he gave them back to me. We started searching for the tickets everywhere. Everybody at home – my father, the cook and my father’s attendant who were all sharing our sense of celebration at this outing, were distressed. My father tottered behind us joining in our attempts to search for the tickets. The cook and the woman attending on my father searched for the tickets at odd places. There was very little time left, if we did not leave in another five minutes we would be late – it would take us a good 40 minutes to reach Satyam from Virugambakkam. We were looking at the same places again and again as though hoping that some miracle would materialize the tickets for us. I slowly started losing hope, I began to talk philosophically — “Probably we were not destined to see the movie. Let us instead go for a long drive.” My son threw himself head down on the bed and started crying. Something in me prompted me to search for the tickets among the previous day newspaper that were stacked away. Lo! I found the tickets among the papers. I did not remember putting them there. I might have kept them with the newspaper and my maid had cleared away the old papers. When I went to search for the tickets among the newspaper, I did not logically direct my search. I think destiny wanted me to watch the movie and so I was lead towards the papers. Everyone rejoiced and sent us happily for the movie. The cook stood at the door and waved to us.
After three days my father experienced a set back. He developed breathlessness and had to be admitted in the hospital. I had thought that his hospital days were only an interim in an otherwise normal course of life. Seeing him again in the hospital I felt defeated, now periods of normalcy seemed like interludes in an otherwise disturbing course that my father’s life was taking. I wanted to get out of this defeatist mode. Luckily my brother joined me and helped me look at the situation more positively. My brother and I started looking at life in this manner – any thing can be sorted out, there are solutions to all problems. Earlier we were giving time frames for my father’s recovery, and were weighed down if he did not show progress. Now we realized that life does not work in that manner. We decided to leave time take its course, allow my father get around at his pace. Little did we realize that he was already functioning within a time frame that was set for him by forces that we cannot fathom.
My Superman did not prove to be lucky at all for he passed away just ten days within the release of the movie. What is important is my father’s spirit – in a manner that befits a hero he made his recovery during the four weeks in the hospital. Who can fight fate and death?
I had thought that movies like Superman and Superman Returns are meant for my son whose world is inhabited by fabulous people who can fly, walk through walls or stride across planets. I realize that the movie makes sense to me in a different level. I reckon that Superman is made for me as well– my father’s life and the memories of my father make me construct meaning and strengthen my belief in Supermen. I believe that the making of the movie itself is inspired by millions of fighters who people this earth. One such humble fighter was my father who attempted to make a come back. It does not matter that such fighters fail in the end, the way my father did or the way Christopher Reeves did. It does not make them any less a hero!
When someone very close to you dies, you take a step close to infinity, you travel along for a distance with the dead. This is how I felt when my mother passed away. During the thirteen days of grieving I was given to believe that my mother had embarked on a journey – a journey that the Brahmin who aided my brother perform the 13 day rites said, was facilitated by me and my brother. We experienced a feeling of awe that it lay in the hands of small mortals like us, who had been given a passage into life by our wonderful mother, to assist her in the journey from the pretha lokha, the astral world to the pithru lokha, the world where she gets united with her ancestors. The pindam, the rice ball that I cooked every day and the rites that my brother performed were meant to conduct her on the journey. During the thirteen days we followed with great absorption the journey that my mother made.
As we sat in the evenings silently those 13 days, having nothing to say, dumb with shock we felt close to her, felt her breath beside us. The nighttime was the worst, I could not sleep. I had never been in my mother’s house without her; we had never assembled – my brother’s family and mine, without her overseeing our needs. As children she was the mistress of the house, we glowed and fleshed out in her love and care. We felt alone, yet not so much alone as we felt just a thin wall of invisibility and a shift of realm separated us from our mother. I felt that she could see me, hear me and watch helplessly her beloved daughter suffer her absence.
I felt that I had in some manner transcended the earthly domain and raised myself a wee bit to peep through the window of timelessness at eternity. The 13 day mourning period had created this island of experience, this limnal space of not here – not there, a platform that the dead and the living share.
This cathartic experience, far from comforting me, shocked me after the twelfth day when my mother sailed away from me to cross the Vaitharani river on the final leg of her journey to the Yama lokha. Here she attained the form of a pithru and the pindams were integrated to symbolize this transformation and dhanams were offered to Brahmins to aid her safe and successful passage.
I came to my house after the 13 days of mourning. My mother’s house was locked away and my father left to stay with my brother in Bombay. The space was lost - the literal space (my mother’s house), as well as the metaphoric space that our religion and scriptures had helped us to create during the 13-day mourning.
Now, in little less than three years my father has passed away. He had stayed with me for long periods during these three years. The mourning period has just got over. I feel my father has just stepped across time to join my mother. Yet I feel both of them very close to me. Are they pressing themselves close to the wall of eternity to commune with me, to make me feel that true love never dies? – “ Death ends a life, not a relationship” (I discovered this line scrawled by my mother in her diary; this line is from the book Tuesdays with Morrie – a book that deeply moved her.)
