"Sorry Maa, but this time you have to slumber on the lumber"

Family & friends,

Your concerns and condolences are appreciated. Day before on 3^rd of May at around 0730hrs my maa gave up fighting for her life. She loved life so much with all is trappings that I found it inspirational.

Last two days were too burdensome with a mix of obligations, duties, love, hate, tears, so many people with lots of avoidable but unstoppable chirping - some truths and some blatant social lies, discussions that I kept on hearing - about the political landscape of Punjab; all - a heady cocktail, leading to complete numbness of mind by the time my obese mother weighed no more than few kilograms in bones and ashes. It was impossible for me to coherently respond to anything immediately thereafter. I highly appreciate that you, my extended family and friends are concerned and I believe you must also have been sad for a few moments, depending on how much you knew Mama. In the last couple of days I realized how magnanimous is silence, if conferred, by those 'mourning' your loss.

Mama had undergone painful two months and an agonizing week which is beyond expression. I saw the ‘line of control’ in the battle between her consciousness and her parasitic microbiome, inching close to her. Those we kill at will in youth, come back with a vengeance at a time when the walls of our fortress are crumbling because of age. Though at 80+ years, one would not say the same about her mental faculties, till three days ago, she was alert, remembered everything in minutest details, could do lot of strategic thinking and was still ordained with her attitude. She refused to talk to my aunt, taking offense in her inability to visit often from Chandigarh (a city 150 kilometers away). Being the eldest in her family, she had a disposition to dominate & had some anger still alive in her; till last. I saw in her a fighter, who had the power and desire to live.

I saw in her a largehearted person, who did whatsoever she could for others without counting. It is unfair to claim she had no failing. Like all earthlings, she had hers, but I loved my parents not because they were great people but because they were mine. One’s kin are the only people one needs no reason to love and respect. Interestingly, while we (my 15 years elder sister, my 14 years elder brother and me) saw her failings, she none in us, for we were her Chef-d’oeuvres. Michelangelo loved not his art so much, as much she loved us - her creations. She sculpted us all different, never repeating her work of art though some strokes on all the three canvas are visibly similar. Looking at me she knew I needed some motivation and would invariably say “you are my babbar sher (lion in Punjabi), you cannot be worried or scared”, and her words would magically spring my feet into action. Since my life is based on the labours of others – hers did the foundation. She was immensely loved and cosseted by my father. She was highly respected by her brothers. And she was very possessive. Everything she immensely loved she would never give away, whether it was a piece of jewelry or my 14 year elder brother. She had a child-like want of fulfilling all her desires and an unostentatious sense of giving away. She loved mangoes, but knew my father loved them more and thus invariably declined to have the last piece which would be hers by parity. I am sure we must have faced difficult financial times but she steered the household so elegantly, that we were never even informed of such times. In short, a cushion she was in my emotional life. But,

“I have no cushions to offer you in return, sorry Maa, but this time you have to slumber on the lumber”.