My Mother's 22 Rooms. A good read & happens to be true.

I cannot sing the old songs, or dream those dreams
again - Charlotte Barnard

There it is. Huddled among other dolls and a few
shreds of cloth. It is wearing a blue dress. I don’t
remember what mine wore, for it has been sixteen years
since I saw it. It might not be there anymore, but I
would like to believe that it is there, invisible to
the new occupants of my house. It is a dancing girl
made of earth, decorating a corner of my friend’s
drawing room. Touch it a little and it will start
dancing, moving her neck gracefully. My dancing girl,
mother bought it, when I was a child, from a potter
selling his stuff on a pavement in Lal Chowk.

And sixteen years later, as I speak to you, there is
no significant noise outside my room. No guttural
voice and no sound of my mother’s U-shaped walker
making its presence felt through the small corridor of
my house. Mother fell down from her bed again this
morning.

23 years ago, in Srinagar, a team of health officials
was to arrive at our school. Their aim was to
administer cholera vaccines to children. But for that
we were supposed to take the written permission of our
parents. Back home I told my father and as expected he
wrote ‘No’ on my home task diary. I found it very
insulting. Tomorrow all my classmates would take the
vaccine and sing laurels of their bravery. And me, I
would be hidden in some corner, red-faced with shame.
It was not acceptable to me. So I erased father’s nay
and wrote ‘Yes’ on the diary. Next morning as the
needle of the syringe pierced my left arm, I did not
even flinch once. I became an instant hero. But as it
is with most acts of heroism, I had to pay a price for
mine as well. By late afternoon, a lump had formed in
my arm. By the time I reached home I was feverish and
drenched in sweat. As I pulled off my shoes, mother
saw me and in one instant she knew what had happened.

It was August and even by Kashmir valley’s standard,
it was hot. I flung myself on the bed. Mother came and
sat next to me. She gave me a glass of milk and kept
her fair arm on my forehead. It felt very soothing and
cold; like a spring. I went off to sleep. Next morning
as I opened my eyes, the fever was gone.

Mother handled the affairs of the house like a
seasoned ascetic would control his senses. She knew
what was kept where. Rice, coal powder, woollen socks
and gloves, soap – she kept a tab on everything. Her
daily routine was more or less defined. She would wake
up in the wee hours of the morning, wash clothes in
the bathroom, sweep and mop the floor of every room
and corridor, put burning coal dust in Kangris in
winters and ultimately take stock of the kitchen. She
did not believe much in spending time in worship. She
was not an atheist but her belief was restricted to
occasionally folding hands in front of the Shivalinga.
Her God was her home and hearth.

But mother was in awe of nature. She feared its fury.
Sometimes, when a storm blew, she would close all
doors and windows and sit in one corner. When she no
longer could face it, she would ask my father, “Will
this storm stop?” Father would usually try to pacify
her, but ultimately he also lost his patience. “What
do you think? Would this storm last till the doom’s
day?” he would snap at her. But the same meek heart
turned into brave heart when any family member
struggled with adversity.

It was in the mid of 1988 that my father had a mild
heart attack. Actually father had a pain in the
stomach and an injection prescribed by a
gastroenterologist reacted, which led to the attack.
Everyone in the family was too shocked to react. But
not my mother. She single-handedly took my father to
the hospital in an auto rickshaw. At the hospital,
mother recalls, a doctor appeared like an angel. He
had a black mark on his forehead, a result of praying
five times a day. The moment the doctor started
examining him, my father vomited. Mother says it was
so intense that it went right into the doctor’s shoes.
But not once did he raise his brow. He kept on
treating my father.

By the end of 1989, men like that doctor somehow
became rare in Kashmir. One day mother came back from
office and she was crying. In the bus someone had
tried to help an old Hindu lady in getting down from
the bus. Another woman, who was a Muslim, criticised
that man saying that the woman he helped was a Hindu
and she should have been kicked out of the bus. Mother
didn’t know whether what she heard was true or whether
it was a nightmare. But what she had heard and seen
with her naked eyes was what seemed like holding a
mirror in front of Kashmir in a few months time. The
time had come, once again, to leave our homeland. The
migration began. Salvaging whatever little we could,
essentially a few utensils and educational degrees of
my college-going sister, we reached Jammu.

After spending a couple of nights in a hotel, father
hired a room in a marriage house. It was situated in
the old city, amidst a bristling market of saris and
dupattas. Every now and then marriage ceremonies were
solemnised in the marriage house. When the crude
ovens, laced with mud and gas cylinders arrived at the
house, we would understand that a marriage was taking
place that evening.

In the ten by ten feet room, ants held a sway. No
matter what you put outside, it would be swarmed by
ants in a matter of minutes. They appeared in hordes,
hundreds of them, attacking every edible item. It was
similar to how people would come out on streets in
Srinagar, few months before we were forced into exile.
Mother obviously could not put up a fight with them,
but she always managed to save a bowl of curd from the
marauding ants, by keeping it in a basin of water. I
always felt that whenever mother took out that bowl of
curd, a secret smile would pass her lips. It was like
a symbolic victory for her or so I thought.

And one night, that smile was also snatched from my
mother’s lips.

I remember that evening. Somebody was getting married
in the marriage house. The entire compound was filled
with men, women and children, dressed in shimmering
clothes. The stereo with huge speakers played popular
Bollywood numbers as some of the guests danced on the
tunes. And a few metres away, we had closed ourselves
in the room.

When the bride was taken away and the noise had eased,
there was a knock on our door. Mother opened the door
and found a young man standing there. He was holding a
plate in his hand. He said that he had been told that
there were refugees living here and so he came to
offer us some food. Before mother could say something,
he handed over the plate and turned back. Mother
lifted the cover and I caught a glimpse of the food
inside. There was rice, dal and some vegetables.
Mother kept on staring at it for some time and then
she cried.

After this incident, Mother developed a strange habit.
She would tell all, whether they cared to listen or
not, “ Our house in Kashmir had 22 rooms”.

For the next few years, we would keep on shuttling
from one place to place, becoming victim of the whims
and fancies of landlords. We stayed at various places.
After the marriage house, we stayed in a window-less
room in a dilapidated lodge, where the number of
mosquitoes was probably more than the cells
constituting our bodies. Then we rented a single room
where we ate, studied, slept, cooked and ate our food
as well. Then there was another house. The bathroom
there had no door and we had to keep on coughing for
obvious reasons. Amidst these episodes of Greek
tragedy, mother kept her struggle on. Everyday was a
battle. From filling water from a leaking tap to
bathing under the tap of an adjacent vacant plot, life
threw numerous challenges at us.

It was years later that I completed my education
somehow and came to Delhi. Few years ago, we bought a
2-bedroom flat in Delhi. But the struggle of Jammu has
left a mark on mother. She cannot walk now. Her left
leg is paralysed. Sometimes she falls down as she
tries to drag her leg. As it happened this morning.
She cannot even speak now. Degenerative neurosis,
whatever that means. With each passing day, her
condition is worsening.

I walk on the road. There is a sea of vehicles moving;
endless. Sometimes I feel that there are more vehicles
than humans in Delhi. And when I cannot bear the noise
any longer, I feel like shouting, “Our house in
Kashmir had 22 rooms.”

by Rahul Pandita www.sanitysucks.blogspot.com