Amma, Where Are You?

"Papa, how are you?" Sonu asked her father, trying to sound cheerful.

Prabhas lay back on bed, his internal organs on fire. "Ma!" he cried out. "Take me away," he mumbled.

Sonu curbed the rush of emotions as she quickly instructed the attender to raise the bed so that her father could be in reclining position. "Has he completed his morning ablutions? Has he had anything to eat?"

For the next 15 minutes, the whole household of two male servants and the attender buzzed with activity. Sonu moved from room to room, overseeing the cleaning, the preparation of food and talking to her father to keep him engaged.

This had been her routine for the last six months since she returned from the US with her husband Rishi and 4 year old son. Her 75-year-old father's health had deteriorated and he complained of constant internal pain. Since her mother Jyothi's death two years before that, the relationship between father and daughter had also been getting edgier and edgier. She wasn't looking forward to returning to her motherland at all, but Rishi's fantastic promotion made it difficult for her to raise any objections. Still she had hoped that in person, things would be better.

They had once bonded so closely! She was a papa's girl, or that's how Jyothi teased her. "You have replaced his mother in affections," she complained sometimes. For all their married life, Jyothi had to live up to an impossible standard that Prabhas had created by projecting an infallible supermom.

But Jyothi had been no pushover. She had tried her best to make her husband happy, and when he wasn't, had simply done what she thought was best. It was no mean achievement to have become the Sr. Vice President in her company despite such a demanding husband. But to the young girl, and the world at large, she seemed a hard-hearted go-getter who barely had time for sentiments. By the time she attained puberty, her mother had stopped being the super mom she thought Jyothi was. Jyothi never seemed to have thought her daughter special in any case. Anytime Sonu went to her with a problem, all she had to say was, "Stop fussing over everything, Sonu! You must know how to handle your issues." 

Prabhas, on the other hand, was on her side. "What! Come let me see who is bullying my little girl!" Or, if a situation bothered her, he would sit her down and tell her how to solve it.

But after Jyothi died, both Prabhas and Sonu seemed to have lost the thread that held them together. When Prabhas advised her, she found it intrusive. He thought she was being thick-headed in not paying heed to what he said. When her own efforts failed, he was heartless in driving home the point that, 'I told you so!'

When Sonu announced she was pregnant, Prabhas told her, "Amma has throat cancer."

"Grandma?" Sonu asked with concern about her 90+ year old grandmother.

"No, your mother. My mother is a woman of that generation - healthy food, healthy habits," even then insinuating that Jyothi was somehow responsible for attracting the cancerous cells.

Sonu objected. Since coming away to a distant land with her husband, she was missing her mother's stern tone and brisk ways. Sonu always felt overwhelmed. Sharing anything with her husband was a risk, for he seemed to be under his mother's thumb. All her worries were viewed as a weakness. Still, her mother's sane advice and practical view proved helpful, but it was short-lived. Since falling ill, the first thing that was affected was her ability to eat and speak. Sonu longed to rush to her mother's side and hold her close. But even suggesting that would have seemed like yet another evidence of her weakness.

And then, they had lost Jyothi pretty soon. "She didn't suffer much," everybody who offered condolences reminded her. Sonu suffered the platitude in silence. Soon, grandmother too passed away.

And now this... This lonely struggle with her father. "Amma, amma, where are you, amma!" her father cried out from the bedroom. Sonu got up, trying to be her grandmother and mother rolled in one, trying to be soothing and brisk as she approached her father and said, "There, there... I am here..."

She returned home in time to receive her son. "Amma, where are you!" the boy rushed to her and hugged her, telling her of his day. 

By bedtime, she was exhausted. She hoped Rishi would be asleep but he was reading a book and looked at her with a smile. She was about to tell him she was tired. But she had already done that all month long. Would one more day matter? Would being done with it be better?

She gave in. When the world fell quiet, she whispered to herself, "Amma, where are you?" Two tear drops rolled down her cheeks.