I met this lady while I was boarding a bus from Bangalore to Chennai. It was a day-bus, a volvo with comfortable seats and an air conditioning. The lady must have been around sixtyish. But, she was wearing a salwar and had put her hair up in a stern sort of way.
As soon as the bus started from Bangalore and after the ticket checking was over, I pulled out an "Arthur Hailey" book from my bag and started reading through it. I didn't feel like talking to anyone in the bus - I usually don't too. I like the solace and the silence.
Sitting close to me but across the aisle, the lady was also reading a book. A spiritual one. She noticed mine and casually commented about Arthur Hailey and how interesting his books are. She also knew about how the author used to sit in a specific industrial setting for several months to write a book revolving around it.
The bus stopped for breakfast and we went inside to have our famous "idli vadas". I asked her to sit along us as she was travelling alone. I wouldn't want my mother to feel lonely, would I? We came back to our seats and resumed our dialog about books and the library chain in Bangalore which is doing a good job of making people read again. She then spoke about how she sweeps the part of the road that is before her gates and about her opinions on plastic, clutter, and the lack of civic sense. It was an interesting dialog indeed.
We then started talking about our families. I understood that she was from Chennai and that she was living in Bangalore with her husband. She didn't mention about any children. I assumed that she must not be having any because mothers do tend to mention about their children in their conversations. She then went on to say that she had a lovely park in her house made for the neighbour's children and how they come and play there till their heart's content. She gave me the impression that she loved children. When the conversation starting revolving around children more, I couldn't resist popping out the question about whether she had any of her own. To that question, came a sober "yes" and a "no". To my confused gaze, she replied that she had a girl and she would have been 30 if she was alive...
I felt contrite for even popping out that question. I apologized to her. She hushed that away and continued along. Her daughter was in college. A bright 20-year old with dreams and hopes in her eyes. During one summer holiday around 10 years back, the family (mother, father, daughter) had been to Assam and the North East states for a vacation. One of their relatives had been working there and they had invited the trio for a sight-seeing trip across those states. The three of them had had a wonderful time going around many places. After almost 10 days of going around, the trio had to return to Chennai. They had to catch a train in another city early one morning. They travelled in a taxi in the wee hours of the fateful day. A speeding bus coming from the opposite direction rammed into their taxi, ending up in a screech of brakes, and shattering of glasses. On hearing the loud noise, the people close to the road ran across to pull out the people who were caught in the taxi. The lady had briefly lost consciousness and her legs were jammed between the seats in a painful position. The villagers started pulling her out of the taxi. She looked across the seat to where her daughter was sitting and pointed towards her and asked the villagers to pull her out too. They just nodded that they will take care but didn't move along to her daughter's side at all. Her daughter was seated with her eyes closed.
Her husband who was sitting in the front seat before her was also injured. Broken bones and shock. The driver had passed away. The lady and her husband were transported separately to the nearby hospital. What followed then was a whirlwind of events through which the lady was floating in and out of consciousness. Surgeries, relatives coming in, blood tests... All through these events, the lady was asking for her daughter. But no one gave her a straight answer. Then, one day, the husband came in to see her. He was undergoing multiple surgeries for the broken bones too. He was still heavily plastered when he came in to see her. His face was sober and stone-like. All he said was that their daughter had passed away. Hers was an instant death due to brain injury. Since the daughter was sitting just behind the driver, both the driver and she took the hit of the bus ramming into the taxi. There were no external visible wounds. The brain had taken the hit as the girl could have banged her head into the driver's seat. The villagers had found out about it as soon as they had felt the girl's breath under her nostrils. The mother blanked out when she heard her husband say this. A part of her knew something was wrong and that part was correct. Her husband's face had a vacant look. An overflowing dam that didn't want to be let off.
It was already three days by the time she knew about her daughter's death. She learnt that her daughter's body had been brought to the same hospital in which she was admitted, a postmortem was done in one of the floors below, and the daughter's body released for cremation. All along, the mother was not aware of it. She was not in a position to move an inch with all her multiple injuries nor was the father able to move around too. So, was the cremation over? Yes, it was. It was done by her husband's brother, who had flewn in from Chennai. She was set to fire on the shores of a river where she swam last week. She had loved to lay on the river bed so much that she had commented that she wanted so stay on at that place forever. She got what she wanted.
I am in no position to write about the mother's grief. Words cannot narrate the tears that would have eroded her heart. The family shifted to Bangalore, the father ended up with diabetes that sets in with grief, and the duo tried to pick up the pieces of their fallen life. Ten years have passed by.
All along, I was unaware that tears had started falling down my cheeks. She was crying too. She showed me the photograph of her daughter that she carried with her. A young, smiling, lovely girl beside a scooty. The mother gifted away all the jewels and sarees she had got for her daughter's wedding. When any girl in the family gets married, the mother buys her a silk saree and a matching pair of chain and earrings to go with it. With every young girl getting married, the mother watches her daughter getting married too. The parents set up a gold medal to be awarded every year to the best girl student in the daughter's college. The medal was made of pure gold. The first year, the mother had been to the college to give away the prize. But the grief was so great that the mother did not attempt it from the next year onwards. There was no point breaking down at the triumphant moment of another girl.
The mother had been to multiple gurus with the unanswerable question "why". When she didn't get any answer, she wanted to know where her daughter went and whether she was happy. She never got an answer for that either. Life moved on. The father and mother tried passing through one day after the other.
She told me about the magnitude of sorrow that engulfed both of them. The most painful of all sorrows is the sorrow of losing one's child and these parents have undergone the raw pain. They are immune to any other sorrow that would befall them in their lives. What else can pain them more? I could see her pain then. The pain felt by one mother to another. The cruelty of fate that made this mother go through this in her life. The pain of not seeing her daughter's face before she was fed to the fire. The pain of living with guilt of having survived the accident that took her daughter away. The pain of not having taken the pain from her daughter when she hit her head on the seat in front. The pain of not having fulfilled her destiny as a mother.
I couldn't talk anymore. I was with living her pain for a long time afterwards.
We arrived at Chennai and parted our ways. I escorted her to the auto stand and shook hands with her. I don't remember her name nor would she mine. But I do remember her sorrow. The sorrow that still lingers in my heart.
The sorrow of having lost someone whom you love...
Kalps
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