The Final Reminiscence

    Witnessing their blissful family moment gave a dull ache in her heart. She had lost her husband of fifty two years Anand to a sudden heart attack a couple of years back. 

     Her elder son was happily settled in Bangalore with his family while her younger one was leading a NRI life in USA . 

 

     She was the solitary resident of Shanti Niwas since her husband’s passing. Never in the wildest dreams she had thought that a house that was once noisy with two boisterous boys, her garrulous in laws, her husband and her would one day be so quite that she would have to wait for the arrival of her help to speak a few words. 

 

      But not for the last few days when her house was full of noise again, her elder son Akshay was here with his daughters Aditi and Amarya. 

  This was the first time he was visiting in the last two years since his father’s passing, he was here to take her to Bangalore. 

 

” But I am happy living in my home beta,” she had insisted on the phone innumerable times. Although she felt lonely at home but she had her neighbours who were her extended family and her relatives who were mostly in Patna. 

 

    ” No Amma, I won’t leave you alone, you know how suddenly we lost Babuji, if God forbid anything happens to you even the direct flight from Bangalore will take three hours to reach Patna. I don’t want to leave you alone at this age and stress about it everyday.”   

    These were his final words before reaching home  to windup her life of fifty four years in the house and take her away. 

 

       ” Aaji!!!” Aditi and Amarya entered her room and hugged her tight calling her with endearment. 

  ” We are so excited you will be living with us now,” they beamed with geniune cheerfulness in their voice. 

   ” We want to listen to the lullaby you used to sing to us when we visited you  “Mor buchi mor buchi” in your dulcet voice.” 

   ” Definitely my darlings, you know my Aaji would sing it to me when I was your age.” She hugged them back thinking she would now be able to make up for the lost time with her precious granddaughters. 

 

   Just then Akshay entered the room, scanning and weighing the two trolley bags he said ” We’ll leave by five thirty Amma, even Patna is having long traffic jams I can see now . ” 

 

    The entire day was spent bidding adieu to the people who meant so much to Shanti, her maid was not just her domestic help but her friend , her gossip partner and her caregiver. 

    Her neighbours Mala and Radha who had shared each moment of love and loss with her. They sat with her but hardly spoke anything tears brimming in their eyes.

 

      Her relatives kept dropping by one after another, her distant cousin whom she tied Rakhi because he had no sister of his own, her niece who lived only a few kilometres away and would keep visiting her with her homemade delicacies and her sister in law who was more like a friend and sister to her. 

   They shed silent tears holding each other for what seemed like eternity. 

  ” After bhaiya you were my Mayka here bhabhi, ” she finally broke down sobbing. 

 

   ” I’ll call you everyday, ” Shanti assured her wiping her tears with the love of a mother. 

 

    But as she assured everyone of calling and talking she herself knew how far she was going from the only life she knew .  The place, the people, the surroundings were her safe haven  she didn’t want to leave. The house she had entered as a bride and was welcomed by her doting in laws, how they had saved money each month to make a two storey house from ground floor. The garden where she loved spending time, having her tea with her husband and tending to each plant with love and care. 

 

     Trying to keep every beautiful memory in her tiny handbag Shanti closed her eyes in front of her husband’s portrait in the living room.  

 

    As she stepped out of her home silence hung heavy in the air , the kind of silence that comes after a storm has passed . She had overcome the storm inside her and taken the decision to leave her home. 

 

       A final look at her home before getting inside the cab she thought that the branches of the Mango tree were waving at her. A tiny sapling she had planted in her first year of marriage which was now a lofty tree. 

 

      The Mango tree looked at her with love and longing. The tree that considered itself to be her first son,  who prided itself with providing them the most succulent Dudhiya Malda mangoes. 

   It remembered the swing her husband had put up for her in Sawan, how the kids climbed on it’s branches all though the summer and how it had given her the shade Shanti needed most when she had lost Anand. 

 

Glossary 

 

Amma – mother in Bhojpuri 

Babuji – father in Bhojpuri language 

Aaji – grandmother in Bhojpuri language 

Mor buchi mor buchi – lullaby in Bhojpuri language meaning My darling my darling. 

Mayka – mother’s home 

Sawan – a month around August in Indian calendar