To Maa, with Love

To Maa, with Love

The best feeling in Life is when you feel that you have full control over your life and that nothing can go against your wishes or desires. The weather seems good, the smile you get makes you feel bright, plain food turns delicious and no work is pain. You merrily dance across and go twirling. And suddenly there is this one day when you realize that you cannot even control a small argument let alone your life. Your decisions taken so far seems grossly wrong and you desperately search for a rewind button just to undo one faulty decision. Alas! Life moves only unidirectional, one way – forward. 

But the delayed realization brings more despair, grief and headache. You resort to aspirins or junk or smoke or a little wine even! The resultant is often more despair & aggravating helplessness. Then you rise one day with steel in mind & heart and proceed to take on this cruel world where you feel no one is bothered about your miserable condition. The first few steps are filled with surety but then it strikes again, this time with larger impact. You are now not so sure about your move and once again you are drawn to the helplessness of indecisiveness. You turn your head to the other side, you look at the deserted road and your face is hit by the ruthless dry acrid hot air which is dusty and grainy. And by now you have lost all that surety both in your mind and legs. The legs want to turn and run back to lonely despaired but yet that safe lodging. And you have already started to visualize that brown wooden door, yellow walls, thick & brick colored cotton curtains and that buzzing motor of the water cooler. Here you are, back again! You search for the bunch of keys which has a fancy red key ring with few small bells attached and the whiff of hot mustard oil in kadahi awaiting maybe some freshly cut vegetables being prepared for supper hits your nostrils and without thinking your mouth opens to say “ma  please give me some tea’.

The situation has changed and thus your circumstances too drastically seem to change. Ma has come for the summer vacation. Her visit was scheduled and you had planned some good day outs with her. Suddenly that wrong gone move made your days acrimonious. Life turned sour and nothing felt well. Planned things started fading and thus Ma’s arrival was washed off your memory. You start wondering how this human called ma handles so much without ever making you realize how much she has been through may be more than what you are going through today. May be that is the reason why she is such pillar for you, a pillar of trust, support, strength and goodness. She is the center of your universe, just like the sun is for the 9 discovered planets!

While you sip that freshly boiled ginger and tulsi tea, abruptly your nostrils trigger the mind’s sensory point and you gradually remember that summer morning from a long gone by year. You were this lost, exhausted, tensed and you had a shaky feet. It was the first time your heart was broken. The world calls it affair but only you knew that you were in love and that it was true and meant to last forever. But, that summer vacation was indeed suffocating and nothing of the vacation sorts. You wished that you could just dig your head and shut out the world because you were cheated. You were taken for granted, treated as a stepping stone and all this while you were blind, stupid enough for not thinking  logically and always putting your feelings over rationality.

It was past, happened in some year which was long gone by. But yet there too it was Ma. She gave you strength, support and above all helped you regain that shaken confidence. Her tea, same ginger & tulsi therapy did wonders that morning when you two sat in those comfortable cane single sofas kept near verandah. That simple touch of hers and her assuring eyes were enough to make you feel that it happens and it is okay. But you should not loose heart or hope and move forward. She in her soft voice assured you that it was okay to make mistakes, okay to fall in love and fail and that it was also okay to be stupid for some time and that it can happen again. She made the weight lift off your heart. Ma said you may repeat it till you make the right choice darling! The world is not so cruel, it is the way we look at it. There is summer and there is spring too. The time has to be right and you have to wait for the spring. But no matter what, hope & trust are the two rails which will support you and give you rest on your way.

So, this afternoon I put the tea cup down after the last gulp go to the kitchen and silently hug her from behind to say that you are sorry for forgetting to pick her up from station, for again mistaking the summer as spring and for many more things but you have those two magic rails as well. She turns and smiles back with a tighter hug!

With love,

to Ma…