By Amrita Talwar
Shashi Bala, my mother, died of ovarian cancer at the age of seventy-eight on 3 July, 2022. Losing a parent is the deepest sorrow a heart can know, but this is not a sad piece. Instead, I relive her--a lively, vivacious person to the very end.
To state the obvious, it’s not easy to write about her. ‘Oh ok,’ some well-meaning people tell me, ‘Don’t feel bad. Seventy-eight years is a long time. She lived and loved her life.’ I nod but I want to tell them, but she wanted to live more. She wasn’t done. Doctors had given us 18 months from the date of the diagnosis. She struggled for two years, found her fleeting moments of joy and happiness, and at last succumbed to the disease, but never gave up.
I still remember the day she got diagnosed. We were sitting in a small, enclosed doctor’s office, and the oncologist gave us the bad news. She was sitting next to me. After we stepped out, she saw our long faces, and said, ‘It’s good that the doctor is good-looking. It’s going to be an uphill, life-ending battle, but at least a good looking doctor will make it bearable.’ We all chuckled. Finding humour in hell was her forte–that’s my mother!
A week before her demise, she asked me to get some raw green mangoes. She wanted to make mango chunda—raw mangoes shredded and cooked with sugar and then spiced just the right amount to result in a golden syrupy pickle with a sweet and sour taste. Apart from jazzing up everyday meals, the chunda also perks up the appetite.
Though my mother’s appetite was dead, killed after numerous rounds of chemotherapy, I thought maybe chunda would help her. I don’t know where she summoned the energy from but she grated all the mangoes. She then stood in the kitchen for a couple of hours to prepare it. She divided it into five jars—one each for her four daughters and the fifth portion for the attendant who she treated as a child.
My jar remains untouched and lies in a corner of the fridge to this day, just the way she had placed it. I couldn’t get myself to eat it. By adding that extra pinch of salt and sugar in the chunda, my mother ensured that it stayed palatable for much longer, a token of her living memory to sustain us through this difficult phase.
Whenever I open the fridge, I am hit by a wave of grief. Grief is difficult to comprehend. Joan Didion, who documents personal grief like no one else in her masterful book, The Year of Magical Thinking, says ‘Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.’ I read these words and accept the truth of grief. Though, I must assert, this is not a sad piece.
My mother was a spirited woman, full of humour, and would enjoy narrating tales from a time past that contextualised her life. Her adventurous journey began in Peshawar, when her family hastily packed their bags overnight and jumped from the windows of their first-floor dwelling, dodging the bullets. In 1947, she was barely six years old, held her two younger brothers, bundled them in sheets and jumped off the window.
The family was forced to go to India–the price of independence was partition. Sleeping with the dead bodies piled in a train bogey, sometimes pretending dead amongst the dead to escape the wrath of the incensed mob. She was the constant support to her sister whose fingers were chopped off during a violent attack.
We grew up hearing stories about how she, as a student at Lady Harding College, dealt with drunkards. Then there were the half-joking stories about the ghosts she met at Shimla Nursing College. As she grew older and her children settled in far off places, she travelled the world, collecting more stories. She spent an entire night at the slot machines in Atlantic City to win a bucketful of coins. Cancun, she declared, was her favourite destination. She chose to live it up, never compromising on the fun while fulfilling all her responsibilities.
And while she was at it, she gave us a treasure hoard of memories to remember her by. She was on night duty when a lady came to inquire about a boy’s health. My mom, thinking that it could be a relative, gave the health update, without realising that the lady in question was the boy’s deceased mother. The version of the story kept changing as the years rolled by. She was confused whether it was the grandmother or mother.
Being a trained nurse and a healthcare professional, she had a very nonchalant view about diagnoses, prognosis that surrounded her family. She used medical jargon-oh this is appendicitis, will need surgery and she would describe the whole procedure in detail, while we were dying of fear.
Even for her own disease she’d talk to the doctor the same way using medical terms such as “you mean the cardia, fundus or antrum”, leaving even him zapped. When the doctors talked loudly to her she joked saying that she has cancer in her ovaries and her ears were perfectly fine. She was optimistic that she'd be cancer free despite understanding her situation fully well. I wonder if she had put on a brave face for us.
Simple household chores made her very happy and she felt activities like ironing, cooking etc helped her deal with “too much to handle'' depressive situation of ebbing life. To my amazement, and admiration, she was very close and dedicated to her in-laws. She’d happily spend hours cooking for them. Also, helping them manage their illness.
She was very fond of Anita Ji Ki Rasoi– a popular Vlog that showcases a family that cooks together and uses the time to discuss their life in general and all its manifestations. My mother found support in this family. Even during the toughest phase of her disease, in between the bouts of vomits and malaise, the only thing that kept her going was Anita Ji Ki Rasoi.
She believed in the healing properties of doing things with your hands – gardening, baking, cooking, washing, knitting. She kept herself purposefully occupied. It gave her a sense of accomplishment. And she wanted her children to inculcate this quality.
This also defined her approach toward mental illnesses. I was diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder in my 20s. Unlike most parents of that era, she didn’t try shoving my disease under the carpet instead took me to a therapist. I remember her holding my hands at the therapist’s office and saying,“what’s got to be done has to be done.” To me she's the best example of her favorite line, “believe in yourself.” There were moments when she was irked with me, and didn’t shy away from telling me, “you can’t be my daughter.”
With her gone, a part of me has died. I feel like shouting “mumma mumma” but somehow words don’t come out. No one will fill this void.
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