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.