IT was around 3 a.m. and I was lying in the bed fully awake when suddenly the lady attendant with my mother in the adjoining room cried for help. As I had fractured my hipbone, it took me a little time to reach there, hopping on my other leg. Meanwhile, my wife and daughters, who were upstairs, had already reached her room. I saw my mother was not responding. I desperately tried to revive her with hope against hope, but apparently she had left this world with complete peace. My mother, who was 94, passed away before my eyes, bidding a final goodbye. We fondly called her ‘Atma’ and she was Amma for everybody.
For a while I was totally blanked and then started recollecting the events. Last month I had fractured my hipbone and was advised to be on the bed for three months. The very idea of restricted movement horrified me. But my mother told me to be brave. She mentioned that she had fractured her leg three times and was hospitalised for several months, but she took it sportingly.
As if it was not enough, her last decade saw her suffer from acute osteoporosis which restricted her to wheelchair or to bed. This happened when she was about to leave for Varanasi that the catastrophe stuck her weak and fragile bones. But I could not remember if ever I saw her complaining.
Despite suffering from acute osteoporosis, she was full of life. She jokingly used to say that my father was a “manglik” and therefore these injuries were bound to happen. I lost my father 24 years ago when I was in the midst of my career and my children were growing. Yes, he indeed left a void, but I had my mother by my side and she never made me feel that father was no more.
I knew that she missed him the most, but she kept herself occupied in something or the other. And at 70, when for most of the people it is the time to wind up, she discovered her flair for writing. Drawing inspiration from her husband, she carried forward his legacy, and entered the field of literature with bold and realistic colours. She went on to bag the prestigious Haryana Sahitya Akademi award in 2001.
She penned down 13 books, of which four came after 2004 when an acute osteoporosis had restricted her to the bed. Her work mainly revolved around women empowerment. In accordance with her wishes, her last rites were performed by her granddaughters Sangeeta and Deepika.
For us, she exemplified courage, strong willpower and became a living inspiration by converting emotions and grief into something constructive and creative, when life seemed difficult to grasp. Even deteriorating health did not come in the way of her passion for writing, and her take on life itself has been a lesson. Yes, she was full of life!
