Woman

She was not my mother, my sister, my daughter or my friend.

this woman who died today.

and yet, my heart is a lump of lead in my chest  

my eyes burn with unshed tears. 

the anguish  beats inside my body

like a prisoner incarcerated in a windowless cell.

she lives in my mind

she has done so

since that evening

when horror and shame were redefined
on the streets of my country

pain stares me in the face
 I can no longer look away

no longer pretend that everything is fine

and carry on with my life and living

as a half human, 

as an object of creature comfort

carrying the burden of shame and guilt

of another's unbridled bestiality

No, I cannot do that any more.

my anger seethes and corrodes  me

I am the woman, the creator, the nurturer 

I am the heart of the human race
I have to now awaken to my wholeness

my completeness, 

I have to know my power

and reclaim it.
she will live on in me
and I will not let her die

.

Face

The face looks at me

from within

the little roadside shrine

love all pervasive

immanence divine

The Valiant One

His battles done
he sits immersed
in the vast
unutterable peace
of extinguished fires
Gautam Siddharth Buddha 
the valiant one

Extinguished

My lamp
extinguished.
darkness
blindfolds 
and robs me
of all 
but that 
which throbs 
flows and 
breathes 

within me.

Invisible Hands

So its  happened at last. All those invisible people, the maids, cooks, drivers, who make our days run on well oiled wheels have finally come together. I call them invisible because only in their absence do they seem to become really visible. If you get what I mean. Just before Diwali, came a missive from them to each home in my complex, asking politely, gently,  for a full month's salary as bonus.It cited the rising prices and the fact that they too were entitled to enjoy the festival season like their employers did.  As expected,  it raised a mini storm. Some of the residents sacked their employees and expressed that they would rather depend on appliances like dishwashers, washing machines etc for their work. Fair enough. To each his/her own.

It brought into focus, the indispensability of these workers in our lives. And also the fact that they are so vulnerable with their lack of organization. No holidays. No value or recognition for years of service.Can be sacked at a moment's notice. Facing immediate suspicion for theft if anything  valuable is lost or misplaced. Their very presence and poverty seem to provide the necessary motive and the evidence against them. 

So they have come together now, my maid and cook informed me with pride and dignity. They are human too. They need support and  their rights to be recognized. The Union for Domestic Workers Rights has been formed in Bangalore.Awareness meetings  are being held in police stations. A welcome step and kudos to those who are making it happen.

treasure

I seek

in your eyes

with desperate hope
pathways

to the treasure

which hides 

within me

~ Rwits

lamp

The dancing brilliance 
of my little lamp
holds me 
spellbound
the wind battles
my doors in
angry defiance
the wick burns low
and I am trapped

in the breathless
agony of this
hopeless love

Affair

I know in my heart
he stands outside 

my shuttered door
in patience
darkness
my constant lover
waits for 
my brief affair 
with the lamp
to be over

Questions On Love

I am a puppet on a string

in your love

and I ask myself

what do I seek from you?

When I say I love you

do I know what I mean?

can I ever know?

or is love just a feeling

a state of being

incomprehensible 

to the mind

the wise say

love is bliss
then why

the restlessness

the agony

the unquenchable thirst ?

what is it that I look for? 

do I see you as you really are?

do I even want to?

or am I really seeking in you

a reflection of my own self

evidence of my lovability?

or is it my mind 

the cheater

the illusionist

which pulls me to you

and makes me seek

outside in you

what lies inside me?

is this the mind's

ultimate deception ?

or is it a neccessary

stepping stone

to the treasure of love 

I carry within?

Darkness

My breathless
desperation
rushes to enclose
the sputtering flame
maybe
its time
I learnt to embrace
my own darkness?

~ Rwits

A Death

we used 

our words

to dig 

a grave

for the
thing of beauty

that lived 

between us.

Loss

Today

I feel

the pain 

of losing

my own flesh 

of what happens

when a surgeon 

with a sharp knife

and clean precision

slices a peice 

of my body

I watch it go

my flesh

cut asunder 

the pain burns 

a cold fire

the lost part aches

as though it

has not gone

will never go

I close my eyes
and feel the 

phantom pain of

that sick, aching 

gangrenous flesh
of mine

this skillful surgeon

will save my life
 no doubt

but I wonder

if this living body

will ever forget

its lost part?

will it ever feel 

whole again?

Unnamed

Not every love can have a name
my love is a bastard child
it came unwanted
unasked for
it sits at my door
unclaimed
I shut my ears
to its desolate cry
I wait for it to die
I look for a grave
unmarked 
in a wilderness
a burial
forgetfulness
not every love can have a name

my love is a bastard child..

Letting Go

I will let you go

yes I must

that is what I hear
that one must do
one must not cling
and hold on to love
for then it rots and stinks
and gives more pain
than pleasure
and so

I will let you go
I will get
the sharpest blade
a swift, sharp cut
is all it will take
to cut the cord
which ties me to you
I will do it
yes, I will
it will hurt
of course, it will
but that would be
a small price to pay
for freedom
yours and mine
freedom from
the waiting
the longing
the doubts
the agonies
the messiness
of love
you are the hole
in my heart
my life flows through
I will plug the hole
I will let you go
And yet
when I look
for you
to set you free
I find you
in every moment
of my wakefulness
in every single thought
that I conceive
I feel you run
with the blood
in my veins
I never knew when
I became you
and I wonder how
I can ever free
myself from
my own self ?

Like · 

• Anand R

A Poem

The wounds still ache

they don't let me forget

 my longed for  

moment of avengement

today

I  killed his pawn 

my opponent smiles

 the game goes on

( Kasab was hanged today, finally)

21st November 2012

poems

the dancing flames
rise high
consuming
my body
in their ferocious hunger
that cage of pain
is no more
I watch 
with amusement
and a slight 

sense of shock
the multitudes mourning
my moment of freedom..

19thNovember, 2012

A fire blazes
in my depths
profound
it razes
my house of pain
to ground
the world weeps
my joy knows no
bounds

( I tried to rhyme in this one !)

19th November 2012

An Account Of A Friendship

 He liked Archie comics, he said. We had found R sitting outside his ward, on an easy chair and my friend had asked him if she could get him something to read. We had been volunteering at the hospice, for about two months, then.  He looked as though he was in his early thirties, gaunt, a skeleton almost. His eyes bulged out a little. He spoke with some difficulty, in a hoarse voice, words barely decipherable.

He reminded me of the pictures I had seen of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. I wanted to move away as quickly as possible. I asked a nurse what his disease was and she told me that it was Hodgkins Lymphoma.

I learnt R's story bit by bit, from the nurses, the doctors. On my next visit, I was told that he had not spoken for three days. His wife had taken everything he had, his flat, his money, his newborn daughter and sent him divorce papers to sign. In those days, I was a trainee counsellor and did art therapy with the patients along with my friend. I did not  have the confidence that I could  help the terminally ill and their relatives by talking with them. 

On my rounds that day, I met R and asked if I could sit next to him. He readily agreed. I was cautious, on tenterhooks while speaking to him. He was too wounded and I was wary of what may hurt. He told me that he was from Mumbai, worked in a music recording company. I then asked him if he liked music and he said that he did.He loved old Hindi film music.We reminisced then about old films and old melodies.We hummed some of them together. And he smiled.

His smile was incandescent. A wide smile, showing an even set of teeth. A pure, innocent, child like smile. It lit up his face, transformed it, made it beautiful. It warmed me up within, in a way I cannot describe. I witnessed  how the beauty of the soul reflects on a face. A beauty that can transcend any physical deformity. His smile became my motivation, my reward.

It became a pattern with us. I would sit with R and we would sing. He would choose songs for me to sing. And he would sometimes accompany me and sometimes not. I am not at all adept at singing, am quite tuneless, in fact.When he gave me a particularly difficult song to sing, I would tell him, "Its too difficult for me. I can't sing it. Only Lata Mangeshkar or Asha Bhonsle can." And he would smile. It became our private joke and never failed to bring that glorious smile on his face. I found that I was no longer bothered by his gauntness, his deformities, his hoarse voice. I learnt that when one forms a genuine connection with a person, the externalities become redundant.I could look past the disease and see him as the lovable person he was.

My friend got for him Archie, Tintin and  Amar Chitra Katha comics from her son's collection. He would be happy to get them. He told us that Archie prefered Veronica to Betty because boys don't like girls who chase them! My friend  got him material for painting. R would paint with zest and she put up his paintings on the wall next to his bed. He was loved by the nurses, who  thronged around him and we teased him, saying  he was like Krishna with the gopis. He enjoyed that.

I learnt that R was in denial of his disease, of his situation. He would tell me, his wife was in her native place with her parents and their child. He would show me her photo with pride, tell me about her. I expressed admiration for her but inwardly felt angry, resentful of a woman who had abandoned her husband in his time of dire need. He said he needed more shirts as he had to go back to Mumbai for his work. I informed the hospice staff and they provided him with a few shirts. He asked for them to be put in his bag for safety. He would sometimes ask me to contact his bank and enquire about his bank balance. I  went along with him, agreeing to everything he said. I could sense that in his heart, he was aware of the reality of his failing, disease ravaged body, of his impending end. But the losses he had encountered in the span of a few months were too enormous.Loss of a home, a job, a spouse, his child, his health and finally his body. Losses too enormous to accept, to reconcile to. And hence the denial. It was his only defence against what life had thrown at him.

We formed a friendship. When I went to him, he would say, 'Its so good to see you!' And then we would chat and sing. He told me that he wrote a column for a Mumbai newspaper. He spoke beautiful English, chose his words with care. I learnt more of his story. His parents had divorced when he was a little boy. They had both remarried and his father had moved to the Gulf. His mother had distanced herself from him and he had grown up with his grandparents. He had a step brother who lived in this city and  had brought him to the hospice. The step brother was fond of him, visited him sometimes and provided him with neccessities.I thanked God for small mercies. He had at least one family member who cared for him amidst all the abandonment.

Sometimes, I found him quiet, morose. On these occasions, I sat quietly with him and soon he would talk to me about some song, he wanted us to sing. I learnt about empathy. If I tune into someone's emotional state, after sometime the person tunes into mine. And also, that silence has its own communicative value and is more effective than words, at times.

I wondered how I could help R come to terms with his reality. I found he was not really interested in or knew anything about philosophy or spirituality.  Because of his denial,  words like 'death', 'soul' which might trigger distress, were ruled out. So, I spoke to him of cars and drivers.

I asked him that if a car became old and malfunctions, what does the driver do. He said that the driver leaves it and looks for another car. I then said his body was a car and he, R, was the driver. The real R sits inside the body and uses it. What would he do when the body becomes malfunctioning, troublesome?He replied that he would leave it and look for another, better one.

He was fascinated by the concept. On every subsequent visit, he wanted me to repeat it. He began joking about it. He would say,"This body is a Maruti800. I want the next one to be a Mercedes or a Ferrari!"One day, he asked me,"This is philosophy, isn't it?"And I replied that it was.

His condition deteriorated. His speech became progressively more slurred and he was disoriented.Yet, every time, I went to him, he said, '"Car," and I  talked about it. One day, I found him very disoriented. He was restless, wanting to get up from his bed. I tried talking to him, explaining to him that he should stay put. He did not listen. I could not connect.On that day, I had felt  disturbed, deeply upset.

When I went to meet him, the next week, I was fearful of what I might find. But to my surprise, I found him very lucid.The restlessness and disorientation had gone completely. Though his voice was weak, he spoke with clarity, in command of his thoughts and words. He spoke to me about his life. He wanted to write his autobiography. " How miserable my life has been," he said. Tears streamed down his face. He told me that when he had learnt of his disease, his  mother had been the first person he had called and informed. But she just did not care. She never came to visit him. This  caused him deep pain.

I saw that he had finally come out of his denial and had accepted the reality of his impending demise. So I spoke to him of the soul. About how it incarnates in human form, in order to gain human experience and to grow. About how he, the real R, remained unaffected by the disease. It was only for the body and the mind to experience. I gave him the analogy of how gold is purified by heating and  explained that he has gone through this purification by the suffering he had endured. He was a pure soul and that is the reason why he was so loved by the people around him.He listened to what I said and seemed receptive. Before I left, he even joked a little with me.

A week later, he was still lucid. He was quieter and peaceful. He said to me, "I am moving on." I was a little surprised as I had never said those particular words to him. I felt happy for him. I told him  that the place he was going to was beautiful beyond imagination and that he would find there the unconditional love, he had been denied here. I asked him whether he believed what I said. He said yes. I left him. He looked calm and at peace.

I learnt later, that he had passed on, early the next morning. Though I had known, from the moment when I had first seen him that he would die, it was still a shock, to both my friend and me.Though I talked of the soul and its eternal nature, in some corner of my heart, I had nurtured  hope that a miracle would happen and he would live. At that time, my understanding and acceptance of death were on a mental level and not really on an intuitive or heart level.

Now, more than a year down the line, I find that he still lives in me. He was and always will be my friend. We walked together in his last days and learnt from each other, the realities of life and death.

Kali Pooja

The inky black
of the midnight sky
dissolves in
the blue of dawn
to the one
who braves 
the shadows within
the Mother's lap
beckons..

~Rwits
Kali in her black form signifies the inscrutability of Maya. In Her blue form, She is Tara, the one who saves or rescues.

Cars, Clothes And Houses

I could see that she was terrified. The whites of her eyes showed above her eyeballs and she spoke in a whispering, child like voice.

I saw her near her bed in the female ward at the hospice, hunched over in pain. I rubbed her back and shoulders for some time and asked if she would like to lie down. And she did.

She appeared to be in her late thirties, dark skinned with a round baby face. Her head had been shaven, maybe two months ago and the hair was growing back. A big maroon bindi adorned her forehead. She spoke in fairly good Hindi though she was from Andhra Pradesh.

I learnt that she had been living in Bangalore for the last seven years with her family. Her husband was a carpenter and they had two sons.The older one was in tenth standard and the younger was in seventh.

The disease had struck six months ago and they had done the rounds of many hospitals before being sent here. She had been here for two weeks now. Her home was far from the hospice. Her husband and children came to see her on weekends.

She spoke of them in whispers. They were so young, her children."Mera ghar, mere bachhe."(my home, my children). She told me that she felt as though a hand was clutching her heart, squeezing it tightly, making it hard for her to breathe. I stayed with her fear for some time, her terror of losing all that was familiar and dear to her.

I have found that the only thing which provides solace at this time is spirituality. For there is really no other way. At least, I do not know of any other way. The notion, that I am not the disease ravaged body, but its occupier, that  I will not be touched by the disease and will move on,  provides relief.

 I tried to explain this to this simple, uneducated, childlike woman. She did not know anything about spirituality or religion. The word 'atma' (soul) was unknown to her. So I tried analogies.

I spoke of her body as a car and she or her real self as the driver. When the car gets old and malfunctions, what does the driver do? She replied that he steps out of the old car and takes another one.The wear and tear of the car does not have any effect on the driver.

Or the clothes she wore. When they became old, faded, torn, she would replace them with new ones. So she is the wearer while the body is only a garment.To be discarded when unwearable and easily replaceable.

Another example was of her being a tenant in a house which becomes dilapidated and old. I asked her what she would do and she said she would move out and seek a new home.And so the soul seeks and occupies another body to reside in.

She knew of Krishna and so I spoke of the eternal and indestructible nature of the soul as described by Him in Gita. That it goes on and on and nothing can harm it. It is neither born nor dies. And she is that soul and not the body.

She smiled and said it felt good to talk to me. I asked her if the fear had reduced and she said, "A little."

I asked her to show me who she was, by gesturing and not verbally. She placed her right hand on her chest. On the exact location of the spiritual heart centre. I said to her that whenever she felt fear, she could place her hand on her chest and say, "Yeh main hoon."(this is me ) Because  that is who she really is, and not the body.

And I marveled that almost all human beings, of whatever age, caste or creed, when asked to show who they are by gesturing, respond in the same way.  We do not indicate the face or the head though its primarily that which identifies us. We place our hand on the spiritual heart centre, the core of our being.

When I saw her the week after, she was sitting outside her ward. I went to her, pinched her baby cheeks and asked how she was and if she was afraid. She said no, she was not. And then she placed her hand on her chest, smiled at me and said in her childlike voice, "yeh ham hai." ( this is me).

In Sickness And In Health

The first thing he told me when I entered their room in the hospice, was the name of their college. "We met there forty years ago and fell in love instantly," he said. She was eighteen and he was twenty one.They  had felt a sense of belonging. "It felt as though she was a part of my body." They were terrified of being separated by their parents and had a registered marriage within two months of their meeting.They were very young , he said and didn't know better. On being told, the parents had not really objected and they were wedded in the traditional manner a year later. By the time he was twenty five, he was the father of two sons.

He worked as a physicist in one of India's premier research institutes while she stayed at home and looked after the children. "She sings beautifully," he told me, proudly. She taught Carnatic music for some time in a music school but then became busy with the children's studies. It had been difficult, he said, bringing up the boys and giving them a quality education as they were middle class people. Yet they had persevered and the boys had done well. Especially the younger boy. He was brilliant academically. He spoke at length about his younger son's achievements. He had met with a serious accident after his graduation and had been bed ridden for months. A very tough time for them. Yet, he had begun his studies again and now works as a scientist in a prestigious position in the US. The sons are in their thirties now. The older one has married but the younger one has not. Life had been rough at times  but they had been all right, he said. But now, she was physically sick. And he had become mentally sick because of that.

Though he spoke with much pride of his sons,  there was an undercurrent of sadness, heaviness and disappointment in his demeanor. I could sense that the sons were not involved in their parents lives. The doctor at the hospice told me later that during the past one month of their stay, the sons have never visited.

They were on their own, he said. They lived in a rented house near the institute where he worked.The older son and his wife have moved away. They are very busy with their work and lives, he said. And  have no time at all for anything else. I made  the appropriate sounds in response to that.

She fell ill about two years ago. The ovarian cancer could not be detected by the Allopathic doctors. They treated her for gastritis. An Ayurvedic doctor diagnosed it correctly and then she went through the rounds of chemotherapy and surgeries. The cancer had spread relentlessly and they had come here, to the hospice for managing the pain.

I broached the subject of spirituality. He told me that he did not think much about it but she did. He was a physicist and so he belonged to the world of science. I  talked of the Quantum theory, the single source and said that Physics seemed to be the subject closest to spiritual truths. He then spoke of energy, of its indestructibility, of how it changes forms. I asked him how he related that to death. He replied that death did not faze them. Death was solace.  It was her suffering, which was difficult to bear.

He could do things for her, take care of her, help her to eat and do her daily activities. But when she was in pain, he had to depend on others, the medical people. And that rankled. He would have to call their GP in the middle of the night and he would not pick up the phone. The next day , he would scold them for disturbing him.The medical profession had no nobility these days. So, he felt helpless, frustrated. At times, he said, he would even be angry with her.

I asked her if she understood, where his anger came from. And she nodded, looking at him, tears streaming down her face.

They had many questions, they said. Many questions about life and death. I said to them that I do not promise answers but I will sit with them, talk about these questions and seek answers with them. And  I told them that there was one thing I knew for sure. That love like theirs will never end. We all come into this world to learn how to love. To overcome the barriers we have within ourselves to love. And they had passed all the tests of love. He had been with her, by her side, through her sickness and borne her pain as his. And so, when they meet again, they would recognize each other whatever their outer forms may be. And take up their love from there. Death will be vanquished.

A Life Quite Ordinary

She was sitting outside her ward, with a japamala in her hands when I stopped by. And though her breathing was laboured, she had wanted to speak to me. She had come to the hospice, just a few days ago. The nursing home people had sent her here, telling her that this was a good hospital, where she would be treated for free. And  having spent most of her savings on her treatment, she  felt  relieved and happy to have come here.

 She was sixty five years old, she said. She spoke in Hindi with a heavy South-Indian accent and so I was surprised to learn that she was a Marwari. Her parents had come over to Tamil Nadu from Rajasthan. She was their only child  and they had died young, leaving her orphaned at an early age.  Then, at  sixteen, she  had met and married a North Korean man, fifteen years her senior. He was a gentleman, she said, her voice reflecting pride. And so the age difference had not really mattered.

Her husband had been taken a prisoner during the Korean war, After his release, he had not returned to North Korea. Instead, he had opted to come to India  and had settled in Chennai. He had found the Chennai heat too oppressive and so they had shifted to the gentler climes of Bangalore after marriage.

He had set up a watch shop in a prime locality and it had flourished. He was a good man, warm, friendly, genuine and people loved him. They had had no children, but were happy enough.Then, one day, on his way to work, he had been knocked down by a young man on a motorcycle. He had fallen on the pavement and had died of brain hemorrhage. His funeral had been well attended. Many of his customers had come from all over the city.

And so, twenty five years ago, her life had changed suddenly. The shop went  into losses and had to be sold off. She then lived alone with her dogs and cats. Her six Dobermans and five Persian cats.

She really looked after them well, she said. They were like her children and she never scolded them or hit them. Her husband ate meat with his noodles but she never did. She hated the idea of killing or hurting creatures who could not express their pain.

She bathed them and took them to the terrace to dry. She held their ears out to the sun in order to dry them out well. And after that, she went down to her kitchen to cook  rotis and eggs, their daily food.

They then came to her and asked for food. "Ma, Ma, main sookh gaya hoon. Roti do, anda do." (Ma,Ma, I have dried. Give me eggs and rotis.) The cats also came and said the same. Sometimes, a cat would come up to her and say "Ma, mujhe peshab karna hai."(Ma, I have to urinate). She would then take it to a sand box, she had kept for this purpose. My face must have betrayed my incredulity, for she hurriedly said,"Baat nahi karte the. Lekin phir bhi karte the." ( They didn't really talk. But yet, they did talk.)

And for every day of her life, she had followed a routine. She woke up at five in the morning and made a mix of rice, chapatis, curd and ghee. She made small balls of this, went up to the terrace and scattered them around. She also kept a pitcher of water there. This was for the squirrels, crows and other birds.  She then faced the rising sun and said her prayers. After she  finished praying, she would  turn around and find that all the food  had vanished.

She would also keep out, everyday, a bucket of water and bread for the street dogs. They too, like the birds and squirrels, had a difficult time finding food and water in this city , she said.

She's had a happy life, she told me. Till the disease hit her and made things difficult. But she has never felt alone, not even after her husband died. And she has always felt loved, much loved. By her animals and by the  people around her. Especially by the college kids who dropped by. They would love to be  her  children in their next lives, they said to her. And if they were not born as humans , they would prefer to be born as her dogs !

An Afternoon By A River

It was the weekly mela by the river Khwai in Shantiniketan. The local artisans sat by the riverside with their wares. With sarees, kurtas, dupattas, terracotta jewellery and figurines. Artifacts and decorative things made from the most mundane raw materials imaginable, pieces of twigs, leaves and such like. We were quite bowled over. By the designs,the colors, the creative ideas. I asked one of the women, selling kantha stitch sarees and kurtas whether they had any designer on board as the designs and the color combinations were so beautiful. She shook her head in the negative. It was all theirs.

Soon the place was full of cars and people. Buyers from Kolkata and tourists like us. Many were boutique owners, buying up the stuff in bulk and it began disappearing fast.

There were a few baul singers too, interspersed with the vendors. Wandering ,mendicant singers. Clad in colorful robes made of  patch work, with their ektaras and dugdugis. An ektara is an one stringed instrument while a dugdugi is a small drum. They  were singing songs composed by  famous bauls like Lalon fakir and also their own compositions. Songs using simple, commonplace metaphors, rich in philosophical content and meaning. Songs born from the soil, water and air of the land, from the hearts of its common folk. Though I had heard baul songs before, performed on stage and television, it was mesmerizing to hear them there in their natural milieu, surrounded by trees and the river flowing nearby.

We joined some people squatting on the ground ,listening to a pair of bauls. One was singing with his ektara while the other was playing on the dugdugi. Music straight from the heart, simple and joyous! It was  food for the soul, no less.  The audience could not have enough and kept asking for more.

When they finished , people went up to them and gave them money to express their appreciation. And a woman in ragged clothes  came forward and offered them money too.

The baul smiled and said, " A beggar begs and gives money to another beggar. This can happen only in Bengal !"

Crows

The doctor at the hospice had sent me to her, telling me that she had been upset, crying, wanting to see her children. I met her, a fair complexioned, hazel eyed, Maharashtrian woman in her sixties. She spoke fluent English and told me that she had been living alone for many years now as both her son and daughter lived abroad. The daughter in Dubai and the son in the US. Her husband had passed away, many years ago.

She had been managing fine. Until one day, she had found herself suddenly unable to walk. The neighbours had taken her to the hospital and she had been diagnosed with cancer. The cycles of chemotherapy, radiation had begun till one day, they had decided that there was no hope for a cure. And so she was brought to the hospice.

She was frightened, confused, worried. About how life was going to be. She either had not been told or was in denial of her impending mortality. Her son had told her that he will be coming soon and had asked her to adjust till then and cooperate with the doctors. He had assured her that he will arrange for a servant to be with her. But she was worried. Servants cannot really be relied upon. How will she manage if the servant did not turn up? I did not  know how to comfort her. I  could only assure her that she was in good hands, here in the hospice. And that her son will soon be here to take care of things. The daughter had small kids to look after and had left after a short visit. She told me that she was a devotee of Shirdi Sai. The woman in the adjacent bed  was also a Shirdi Sai devotee. I told her that and said that Baba is always there with his devotees, in  the hope, that her faith will provide some solace for her, will assuage maybe a little of her pain of being alone in a strange place without her loved ones.

I saw her two weeks later and found that she was semi conscious.  A mobile phone was clutched in her hands and she was repeating the names of her children. She was not cognizant of my presence.

When I visited the hospice  next, I was told that she had passed away. She had had tears in her eyes in her last moments. Her son had already left for the US before her death, having said that  he will not be able to be present for the cremation and that it  should be carried out without him.

I thought then that this woman must have devoted her life to her children as most mothers do. They would have been central to her existence for years, occupying all her thoughts, care, concern and efforts. And yet, she died alone, in the care of so called strangers. And I do not wish to be judgmental of her children. Its not  easy to set aside one's life and be in another country for indefinite periods of time. They must have had their own reasons and would have suffered their own agonies.

I am the mother of two sons, who are working and away from home. I thought  that this could well be a possible scenario for my last days. But strangely enough, the thought did not depress me. Instead, it made me wonder about relationships and what parenthood is all about.

So much is made of being a parent, about producing an offspring, especially in our part of the world. But when I come to think of it, I find that I actually have no control over the process at all. I cannot really choose the moment of conception or the  moment of birth. I cannot choose the gender, physical appearance or personality traits of the child. I cannot do anything to regulate the developmental process of the fetus in the womb. And once the child is born, the flow of its life events  cannot really be decided by me.

And yet, I think of the child as my creation, my own flesh and blood and take so much pride in this thought. And devote a major part of my adult life just to this one purpose of having a child and bringing it up. And though the process gives me joy, it is also associated with a lot of pain and worry as I take on so much of the "responsibility" of being the creator of the child.

Tirumoolar in Tirumantiram speaks about the foolish crow, who painstakingly brings up a cuckoo's child in its nest, thinking it to be its own, the clever cuckoo having planted its egg there. Tirumoolar says that it is the Devi who resides between the eyebrows (probably meaning the Agya chakra) who is the real mother of the child and who directs the miracle of birth.

If I am an energy field as Quantum theory and many scriptures say, can I really produce another energy field? And does the consciousness which occupies this ever changing, impermanent house of energy really reproduce another of its kind? Or, as a wise one once said, is it not the Almighty power, the Perfect Intelligence which does the work of tying an immortal soul to a mortal frame, in the workshop of the womb? And this soul is not likely to be the creation of either my body or soul. This could be just one of the routes by which a relationship is forged according to the Divine Plan.

And I blinded by Maya, think of the child as my creation, take pride in it as such, agonize over its well being ,its future and so on. Pretty much like the foolish crow.

If death is Maya's clever practical joke, birth does not seem to be any less ingenious. Keeping me trapped in the illusive pride and the inherent suffering of possessiveness. In the bondage of 'my' and 'mine'.

And if I could just break out of this illusion, I may find that relationships need not be defined by bonds formed through birth or through marriage. Any relationship with any being can be equally important and meaningful. And this will be so liberating and will so expand the scope and nature of my relationships. It does not mean that I abdicate my parental role, but that I fulfill it knowing that the responsibilities  of the progenitor do not lie with me but with the Almighty. He is their creator as well as mine and so I enjoy the relationships without being burdened. Without the pain and claustrophobia of clinging and possessiveness.

And the thought comes to me that  the staff at the hospice, who looked after this mother with love and care in her last days were no less her own than her children were. But unfortunately, she did not realize this.

Dakshineswar

We set off in darkness, before the crack of dawn. The rickshaw puller we had hired the previous evening, was  outside, curled up, sleeping in his rickshaw. It was a  strange, indescribable feeling, traveling through the slowly awakening town, on our way to Dakshineswar. It was one of my coveted destinations. I had been there as a child but the memories had faded. One of the most revered shrines for Bengalis. Home for Dakshina Kali and her beloved son, Ramakrishna.

We saw people on their morning walks. A man, scattering handfuls of grains for the birds,as he walked along.When we reached the temple premises, the shops selling the pooja thalis had begun to open. We bought one. Heaps of  blood red jaba (hibiscus) flowers lay on the shop counters. It was magical for me . To see the room  Ramakrishna lived in. His bed, his personal possessions. The balcony where his beloved Mother had first appeared to him in person. He had seen Her standing there, hair unbound, looking at the Ganges as it flowed nearby.

The door to the sanctum sanctorum had not yet been opened.There were only a few people around. And from the way they exchanged pleasantries with each other, they appeared to be regular visitors who probably lived in the neighborhood. I envied them in my heart. Living so close to such a place. Being able to visit whenever they wanted to. Such good fortune! While I lived in the hot desert sands of a mid-eastern country. Arid in so many ways.

 The sun had not yet risen and the frenetic activities of the day had not yet begun. In the early morning light, I sat on the temple steps. A few hundred pigeons were perched on the temple domes.Groups of them taking flight all of a sudden and then settling down.And then a mangy looking stray dog came, lay down right next to me, and appeared to go to sleep.

My impulse was  to move away but I willed myself to keep sitting there. Somehow, it did not seem right to move away, sitting as we were, a few steps away from the shrine of the universal Mother. And I noticed that no one was shooing him away. The people, the regulars were talking to him, asking him to move a bit, give way, as though he was one of them, a familiar friend, a fellow human being. Speaking to him and treating him with tenderness, affection.

And why not, I thought. He was as much Her child as any of us were. And had as much right to be where he was as any of us had.

The shrine doors opened and the worshiping began. I too stood in the queue and paid my obeisance to the Mother.

Since then, I have visited many other famous temples and magnificent churches in India and abroad. But the memory of sitting there on the steps of Dakhshineswar temple, with the mangy, stray dog, is the holiest one I have.

Change

He saw me and began to sob softly, silently. I then saw the tube in his throat and the deformities  wrought around it by cancer. He was fair skinned with salt- pepper hair and beard and appeared to be a Muslim. I was in one of the male wards at the hospice.

He  used sign language to tell me about himself.I could understand only a little. I understood that he had three small children.  There was something about a woman having left. Apart from that, I could not understand much. He kept on trying , repeating the gestures and sobbing soundlessly. I felt helpless, inadequate. Then I asked him his name . He mouthed it and somehow I understood and said it. His face brightened and he  smiled . I asked, "Kashmiri ?You are from Kashmir?" He nodded excitedly , the smile broadening. And then, suddenly,I got a hang of what he had been trying to tell me. That his father had come over to Bangalore from Kashmir , many years ago. He and his siblings had been born and brought up here.They worked in the garment business. That his parents were no more.As I repeated whatever I had understood , he became more and more animated. When I left, he was quite cheerful.

I thought about the morose, sobbing man I had met just a few minutes earlier and wondered about the  fluidity and transience  of feelings and emotions.  A few moments of human interaction  had brought about this change, even though the communication had been so flawed and not really on a deep level. I then thought, that  maybe, what had mattered to  him was not the content or quality of  the communication but  just that somebody had made the effort.

And  I find that I now  know something valuable about human communication and relationships. His gift to me.