The greatest Mother who ever lived

I feel like an embodiment of memories, at times. Occasionally, it feels like a burden to remember so many things, memories going all the way down to my toddler days, like a pot filled with water to the brim with every stored droplet weighing me down. Contrarily, those memories are also comforting. They relax me like an old Eri shawl, the indigenous craft of weaving which has now been lost to the cruel tactics of time, yet the smell when it is taken out of the old aluminium trunk brings inexplicable nostalgia and every thread of the fabric seems to be an heirloom, a folk song passed down to me like I am someone special, someone with the secret knowledge of my ancestors.

While I remember details of my life, some memories are written on the wall like graffiti that cannot be missed and some details pop out only when the sun changes angles throwing light on them. However, the memories pertaining to my mother stands out like the wall itself. Whenever those memories hit me like an undeniable gust of Fagun breeze, every single time I am reminded that if there was no her, there would be no me. This realisation is not limited to the biology of my existence, but also in the meaning of my existence as a conscious being, a cosmic accident that cannot just be a coincidence. It is she who has given meaning to everything I am supposed to mean, the happiness I must learn to attain, the pains I must learn to surmount.

I remember when I must have been two, Mother would take me with her to her school, make me sit beside her students in class who overwhelmed me with their endearments. Like glimpses in an old TV set catching signals from various sources, scenes pop up in my mind of dry leaves on which I walked, enjoying the crisp crushing sound, while I held the hand of some student who was only a year or two older than I was, yet behaving as if they were my guardian by some divine dictate. I see myself drinking water straight out of the hand-pump while getting my shirt wet, much to the reprimand of my Mother later on. Then pops up the angry face of some fearsome teacher with his paan-stained lips being around whom was a relentless scary adventure. I would constantly look forward to the tiffin break when I would eat boiled Bengal grams that I carried in my Mother's plastic jewellery box, my substitute for a tiffin box.

Years later when I officially went to school, I remember my Mother sometimes carrying me on the carrier of the bicycle she rode, while I pestered her to buy me toffees that I was not supposed to have because I had taken a dose of Krimi medicine that morning. Heavens! I was a difficult child.

I recall the warm meals upon our return from school, which she had prepared after a long day of chasing after young children at her own school.

I remember her surprising me with books that the door-to-door salespersons used to sell, spending sums that were not generally something one would spend those days on books outside the school curriculum.

Life took unexpected turns for us in a short span of time, and I remember her coming to receive me from the examination centre on the first day of my matriculation exam, teary-eyed at the realisation that her son was growing up faster than she would prefer, her fatherless son who had lost his father just a year ago, her son who was only yesterday a toddler walking with her to her school.

I remember all those years later when she dropped me on the T-point of the Jawaharlal Nehru University with my bags since I had not been allotted a hostel yet, helplessly leaving me to my fate, as she had a train to catch an hour later.

Years turned to decades, and with time, as if the lenses with which I view life has become increasingly focused, I can see with greater clarity all she has done for me and my sister, while singlehandedly juggling between her life as a teacher, and doing her best to conform to a society where being a widow is a disqualification. Over the course of her four decades as a teacher, so many of her students have gone on to be respectable professionals. Most importantly, so many of them have gone on to lead happy meaningful lives for which they never miss the chance to express gratitude to my mother, should their paths cross in the market squares, or on the roads.

All the memories I harbour would perhaps take up an ocean should they be documented, but they remain, inside my mind, like a testimony of what an incredible woman she is, a comfort for me to know and lessons for me to rely back on.

I do not know what I can give her so that such a valiant journey of a woman is appreciated in the truest sense. Perhaps the greatest obeisance to her would be honouring her legacy in the truest sense, remembering it, celebrating it every waking moment of my life. It is possible that the most genuine honour of embodying the values she so meticulously instilled in my sister and me would be to be human beings who appreciate the gift of life, an existence that transcends the material. In essence, now that she embarks on the new phase of her life as a retiree, perhaps the most significant gift I can give my mother would be to guarantee that every single moment she feels celebrated and valued, and to dedicate myself to her in the same way that she dedicated herself to my sister and me.