I am not the ‘blood girl’. I can’t take blood. I can’t do needles. The sight of blood, the strong, stringent smell of the hospitals, the sick patients, oh, patients are suppose to be sick, let me rephrase, the worn-out, ‘longing to go home’ patients, all of these things make me feel woozy. But when someone so close to your heart needs immediate attention, there is no escape plan. I had to take my mother to the hospital, precisely four days back. Nothing, ‘Oh Jesus’, kind of a thing with her; it was simply jaundice accompanied by diabetes. Sleazy combination. So there I was, with her, she on the ‘terribly used bed’, in a twin-sharing room, that smelled nothing but ‘hospital’. I had never seen my mother so sick. Sickness wasn’t meant for her. In my subconscious mind, she was supposed to be healthy, as sturdy as a horse. My mother is my hero and no hero is weak. But the fact was that she was unhealthy. She was laid on the bed, rolled up like a ball of cotton, her eyes gone further deeper, as if somebody had pushed them inside. I never noticed her so closely. I simply didn’t have that ogling habit. But in these four days, I had nothing else to do, while she shut her sunken eyes and slept every bit of the day. That was the time, when the fine mix of drugs and glucose, impregnated her skin, I watched her really intimately then. I saw her with my naked eyes, which meant most of the times, in ordinary days, I saw her in a pseudo way, like not really noticing. But this time, I observed the wrinkles on her skin, the grey of her hair and eyebrows and the face that had faced so much of music as she walked the path of life. (‘path of life’, really? That sounded cliché, but that’s what I can think of right now. I mean, here I am being all emotional about my sick, suffering mother. I can’t really focus on bettering the language and trying to prove myself as one of those writers who pen down all the right words at the right time).
My father is another man altogether. (Now why on earth, I am fidgeting with him?) I cannot compare him with ordinary people, normal people. Because he is not ordinary, he is not normal. But he is not abnormal either. He is one of those characters that fall right between not being normal and quite smart to not prove themselves, abnormal. We all must be acquainted with such characters at some point of time. Rings a bell? So he is extraordinary, one of those men, who blame their wives for their own mistakes and drawbacks. My father has this killer-attitude to bring all of it down on my mother as if she really has the ability to turn the wheels wrong way for him. And then there is his ego. The ego is always the peaks, never the valleys. And the ego makes him believe that whatever he thinks is true, that he thinks all the right things, as flat as the rain types. I wouldn’t have pinpointed all his weaknesses. I am not one of those people, who make judgements about others. But why I am doing this is, because it was my mother who was victimised by his weaknesses. With all his short-falls, my father couldn’t keep his wedding vows. He did not turn into what one says a ‘good husband’. He did everything, stuck to my mother like a determined housefly, produced me and my sister, let his own name be on the nameplate on the front door, but he never really did what he was suppose to do-take care of my mother.
My mother and father both have their minds working at an entirely different tangent. They are both like on either sides of the tracks and they work, think, act and do all different. So if I say, my father is cheese, it means my mother is the chalk. If mother is ‘the all time teacher’s favourite girl’, my father would be the ‘lord of the last benches.’ Very early in her marriage, mom realised that she will have to do her way. She will have to be independent and strong and all those things that a single mother is suppose to be. She knew she will have to raise us all alone, feed us healthy and read us worthwhile. And there were greater things when we grew up. Let’s look at a bigger picture. We were two girls, my sister and I, with an independent, ‘all alone’ mother. So she had this huge responsibility to find suitable mates for us, hunt down families who would think pragmatically, not with a closed mind, not with a ‘her parents are separated’ mind. By the way, my parents just stay separately. They have two separate homes, which mean I have dad’s home and my mom’s home. But they are not divorced. None of them wanted to spend the time and energy and money to go their separate ways. They did not wish to undergo the effort. I am not sure how it was for my father to spend all these years alone, sleeping on a double bed with the sheets never getting wrinkled on the other side or waking up to make his own tea or not having anyone to complain how his legs ached when he ate something tangy. But I know pretty well, it was really difficult for my mother. (She told us about it while we grew up. We were like three ‘up for a coffee’ kind of friends, my sister, mom and I). I remember how she attended our annual functions at school and then rushed to her meetings at the office. She discussed some issue over the phone with her colleagues while she cooked our favourite suppers and she made those different envelopes for money that she allotted for never-ending expenses. Had my father been with her, means by her side, she wouldn’t have to do these double roles or multitasking or have those frowns for the cash-flow. All these years, I am used to seeing her strong. (I hope it’s clear what I mean by strong now). I haven’t seen her shedding tears or knocking on the door of the world to disclose her problems. I have always witnessed the very womanly side of hers. (By womanly I mean strong). For me, she is like a ‘woman are from venus’, really born in Mars, having all those nerves of steel traits in her. I wonder how she got it. How she could hold all these years, until finally collapsing now. She has collapsed now, as if she wants to give up the self-struggling fight. I can see in her eyes now. And this is not just because of the jaundice or the dreary time spent at the hospital, it is beyond that. Now I think, she wants to really wallow on the bed of life and be pampered until she finally rests in the womb of the earthly soil. I am going to make sure it happens her way from here on.