Happy
Mother’s Day Mom! Today you are 80 years or thereabout old. You have been in
eternal bliss and away from me for forty years. During the last four decades, I
have continually looked for ways to reach you. I am told that your two eldest
sons gave you a solemn farewell complete with the citation of the holy vedas, offering of pindas and largesse to Brahmins, as per the Hindu Sanatan Dharma
you had instilled in us. I was yet to receive my sacred thread and my resume was considered
incomplete to participate in the rituals. As a young skinny boy, hardly six, I probably
watched, from the sidelines, my brothers perform the thirteen-day valediction
rituals. As you bade us bye, my little
innocence was busy munching cucumbers and playing hide and seek with my
cousins.
Mom,
since then I have always imagined you in the small meditations and mindfulness exercises
I do, whenever I wake up early. At times, on my wife’s behest, I ring a bell in
front of our small family altar. I believe you hear us, don’t you? However, without
a face, it has always been very difficult, mom, to connect to you. Whenever I
want to meet you, I substitute you through the face of your second elder sister
and often through your second youngest daughter – for I am told that they
resemble you the most. By the way, mom, your sister has set out to meet you. It
has been almost a year and I believe you are together now.
Today,
I thought I would try a postmodern method to get across my love to you. Mom,
you know what, now, they have something called Facebook and many other
facilities to send messages directly to the intended. One young and chic
looking American man, who looks a bit like Thuliama’s son, Devi Charan,
invented it and it works wonder. I am posting this message there, for you to
like. I know you didn’t go to school and probably do not understand English. No
matter, mom, they say that the language of love is universal. Kindly use this
language to get to my message.
Thank
you very much for bringing me into this world, mom. Do you remember the day you
begot me? I believe it was a hot summer day that I decided to emerge out of you
after nine month’s of nestling in your warmth. I am told that the weather was
so hot that you had chosen to remain outside the house for most of that day.
After running several other household chores you had gone to the horse stable
to clean it. Typical of the customs of our village at the time, you were not
spared from doing your usual jobs, most of them tedious, even on your expected
delivery date. At the stable, I am told, on a heap of semi-chewed horse fodder
you delivered me. Is this true, mom?
When
I first went to school, the school headmaster asked me my age. I didn’t know
what to say. My uncle (remember your dewar,
mom?), who was with me that day didn’t know either! He scratched his head, half
closed his eyes and quickly connived. He recollected things in a flash. ‘Sir,
this one was born when the peach trees were in full fruit.’ The teacher and
‘kaka’ then bent the knuckles of their fingers and together agreed that I was born
in July. As for date, it was the teacher’s call. He assigned me with one – the
26th of July. Don’t feel bad for this, mom, for I am not the lone
victim of this game. In our part of the world, the age of boys and girls from my
generation and generations before me, was mostly approximated. It was like the
value of pi –not exact. Illiterate parents and elders who had no written
records to fall on depended on circumstantial evidences and elements to fix birthdays
for their children. So when children came of age and parents decided to send
them to school, age of a child always came up for a roundtable sort of
discussions, between the teacher, the to-be-taught and the parents. My kaka
must be correct, for even Facebook reminds me of my birthday every 26th
of July.
Everyone
is fine here, mom. Of course, you know that your youngest daughter bade us
goodbye about sixteen years after you left. Thuliama
had taken good care of her after your departure. She had grown up to be a sweet
beautiful girl. Please giver her my love. Your eldest son from your first partner is
fine. He has grown a bit old now. He is very ambitious and always dreams of
making a lot of money. While in Neoly he tried marketing all kinds of obscure
things like black ginger and magical plants. He loves me a lot and remembers
you fondly. He is in Buffalo City, USA, should you like to contact him. Remember,
mom, you had an additional daughter? Although she is dad’s daughter, you reared
her as your own. In fact, she was the only one who received your tutelage and care
into her teen. To the rest of us, particularly to me, she took your place after
you. Thanks to her as well as my other female siblings, I received a lot of
maternal care, near maternal. Dictionary and relationship formulary may not
allow me to call it maternal, but it was; it may be sisterly or ‘sisternal’,
but very fine.
Your
second son Damber has grown up to be gem of a person. He lives in Thimphu,
Bhutan. Although he is bald, a bit like an American eagle, he looks robust and
handsome. He doesn’t have that runny
nose and skeletal looks anymore. I believe dad had wanted him to be a
doctor. With an MBBS and an MPhil in
medical psychiatry, he has proven dad’s prophesy right. He is doing very well
for himself. He even knows how to manage postnatal complications. Wish he were
there forty years ago to help you with that fatal placenta retention, mom. You
have two grandchildren from him, both adorable kids. Your second daughter Chhai
lives in in the USA today. If kaka had not removed her from school soon after
your departure, she would be a world leader today. Like hundreds of other
people, socio-geo-political complications forced her out of Neoly Bhutan two
decades and a half ago. A beauty and brain in one package, she has four
twinkling daughters and a dashing son.
Your
third daughter Radha didn’t grow very tall, but can call the world her home. Like
maili didi, she has resettled in the
USA and enjoys being there. She has a very caring husband and, today, spends
her days taking care of her granddaughter and watching fake wrestling matches
on television. These wrestling matches, mom, show huge oiled up men and women
in underpants beat each other in turn. I don’t know whey saili didi likes this,
for she is a docile being. She has two handsome sons, happily settling down in
life. Last year she wrote a very poignant eulogy in yours and dad’s memory. She
read it out from Virginia, USA, while daju and I cried in front of our laptop
over Skype. As your next child, I am
fine. After you left me, I had a difficult time adjusting to the new home and
new life. Kaka was challenged having to take care of seven of us in addition to
five of his own. Food was not good and once I even suffered from night
blindness and nearly had to spend a night at the neighbour’s field toilet. Not
to worry, mom. I have overcome that and have come a long way in life. Today, I even have a LinkedIn account, where
scores of professionals have recommended me for various business management
skills. I have also not gotten into any serious bad habit. I chewed doma for sometime, but quit before I
fell into halitosis. I do social drinking, but usually one tall can of lager is
enough. Today, I work in Druk Holding & Investments, the largest company in
Bhutan and they call me Associate Director. I work as a management consultant
and advise companies on manpower planning and organisational structuring. As
you might guess, I understood manpower rightsizing and organisational issues
rather early in life. We were a family of about twenty and as we sat on the
kitchen floor yoga style for dinner, hierarchy was important, the line of
command was clear and the channel of communication only one way - top down! Given
the socio-political complications I may never become a full director, but I
continue to bide my time, mom. I have a small family of my own – a lovely wife and
two smart boys. My only daughter has been with you since 2011. Give her my
love.
Kamala,
your fourth daughter, is a tiny, but exuberant woman. She lives in Daifam; remember
Nalapada, where you and dad used to rear a farm of cows and buffaloes? Daifam
is not far from there. She has three grown up and caring sons and an elderly
husband, who is much improved from his initial slightly wayward manners. Rest
of her siblings love her a lot and wherever we can and she needs, we help her
out with little bit of moral and financial support. Your second youngest
daughter is also in Thimphu. She is an agriculturist and shows farmers how to
grow oilseeds. We used to grow a lot of mustard in Nainatal, mom. Hema would
have been a real help if you were around today. Hema, everyone says, resembles
you the most. So, whenever daju and I want to meet you, we go to her place and
look at her. She is stern, but loveable. I believe you were also stern and
once, during a quarrel, picked up dad and wrestled him to the floor. They say
dad was small built like me, is that so? Hema has a daughter, very charming and
tall and a son, who is a bit shy, but brilliant. He can do the Rubik Cube in 28
seconds and his cousins are envious of him. He is the only grandson of yours
who can do that. The rest are struggling to complete the Rubic in a day even
after rummaging through Google and YouTube.
Wherever you are, I feel you are watching down
on my siblings and me just like Mufasa watched over Simba in The Lion King - that
cute cartoon movie! Thanks to your timeless blessings, deathbed wishes and, perhaps,
the heavenly blessings, all of your children are fine. When you and dad left, seven months apart,
forty years ago everyone in our village thought god and humanity had failed.
Everyone cried and everyone prayed for you and for us. Today, some of them are
even jealous of us – as you have been at peace for long and we, your
children, have enjoyed a fair amount of success in life, so far. I hope to meet
you one day. Until then, good-bye and a Very Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! My
regards to dad; please tell him I will Skype him on Father’s Day!
