Lovely was
your typical Punjabi bride; audible from metres off. Her bells and baubles bespoke
of life’s promises. The one discordant note in her squeaky new life was her
mother-in-law. “I think your Mum may be a latent hypochondriac,” she had begun
to make tentative sounds around her groom.
Mummy Ji
regularly updated her list of ailments. If it was, “The smoke from the sheller is
burning my throat,” one day, it would be, “The pesticide on the okra has upset
my stomach,” on another. Her irksome aches and pains were rivalled only by an
intense distrust of the medical fraternity. She refused to present herself to
what she called a “plain MBBS.” Her physician had to be a specialist with published
research and an award or two.
Fatigued
with this on-going saga of ailments, the family had all but tuned her out.
Lovely was Mummy Ji’s uninitiated and obligated listener. This one way monologue
formed the basis of their flaky familiarity over the next decade or so. Lovely learned
to mask a growing impatience with courtesy and silence. “I think her mind plays
tricks,” she would tell herself.
There was
more; an obsessive preoccupation with cleanliness and an ever present
insecurity over religion and rituals. “There is so much to be grateful for, why
can’t Mummy Ji be happier?” Lovely had graduated in her communication with the
husband. But there was no insight forthcoming from the family other than a hurt
withdrawal.
Until one
day.
The house shot
into an overdrive. Beeji was coming home from the hospice. With her terminal prognosis
and a life expectancy of three months, she had expressed a desire for reunion and
reminiscence. Lovely did not know what to expect. She had never heard anyone
speak of Beeji. A mute spectator, she watched the bed ridden elder wheeled and
settled in.
It was one
of those lazy summer mornings when a lone hawker’s cry wends around tree lined
lanes. Lovely sat playing cards with her nieces and nephews. Mummy Ji was
hovering over Beeji, concluding the diaper drill. The patient lunged suddenly,
the room going still. Everyone turned to the bed. Beeji was holding Mummy Ji’s
hands, tears rolling down withered flesh, “I am sorry, so so sorry.”
She had
carried the bitterness of her son marrying below him half her life. “I would
not acknowledge your mother-in-law while we lived together,” she looked at
Lovely. “My hurt ego preferred hospice care to being dependent on a
daughter-in-law I did not consider fair, cultured and religious enough for my
son. I was wrong.”
Lovely
turned to her Mummy Ji, suddenly seeing it all. “Do you see how Beeji’s
dismissal affected your DNA, your cells? It made you compulsive and obsessive. How
can you bear now to change Beeji’s diaper after a lifetime of painful
rejection?”
“That was
her karma; this is mine,” the smile was wan.
