Nothing undoes this loss

Sudhansu Mohanty

My mother, Premalata, passed away recently. She was irrepressible in her concern for others.

There were two invaluable lessons that Ma taught us. It was 1965. On festival days, my father invited Class IV employees for lunch. Ma joined in to serve. Others baulked at serving one guy. Ma served him single-handedly with towering humility.

Baffled, I’d asked, ‘Why did you serve Shankara alone, Ma?’ Her face grimaced in a frown. ‘Untouchability, son! This heinous practice foisted on society!’

Next was when we were celebrating Ekoisia for my newborn nephew. Puri Jagannath mahaprasad was standard fare. Ma tiptoed to me, whispering if she’d get homemade food for my Muslim friend. The latter heard her and matched Ma’s concern. ‘Mausi, you needn’t bother — Sudhansu and I will have mahaprasad together off the same plate!’

Humanity’s one, she explained later. ‘Did we choose our caste, sect or religion? No — we’re all fellow humans!’

For one forever concerned about others who loved people around, hers was a bizarre, lonely send-off. Only a hazy soup of memories rushes up and stays as a wall of treasure.

I’ll hear her no more. Each morning when I was with her: ‘What’ll you have for breakfast… lunch… dinner?’ I can hear her words, her thoughts that I could intuit hearing before she framed them in words and spoke.

I saw her last photo — her mouth open in a painful rictus. I hated remembering her by that. I ‘exiled’ the photo. ‘I’m way past my time!’ she would’ve said, as she’d years ago, forcing the metaphor, ‘Let me go!’ I was with her — I didn’t let her. This time her Methuselah genes fell at the last post — coronavirus.

I look around, girding myself to face this grisly fabric of life. People dying everywhere — gasping for breath, helpless, living deaths! Inconsolable grief stabs, and through my sniffles, melancholia hangs.

‘Grief can’t be exorcised,’ says my friend Sudeshna, giving voice in writing to words the lips daresay. ‘You’ll make friends with grief and walk with it hand-in-hand; sometimes it clutches a little tighter, sometimes its hold is light, but it’s a sustained presence and can’t be wished away.’

The immanence of grief!