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Kamala Das

The freedom struggle gave the youth a chance to become heroes

I am embarrassed to talk to allopaths about the cures suggested by the village healers of my childhood. If an epileptic is made to clutch a piece of iron in his hand, the seizure is sure to subside. I cannot convince the doctors that reciting the words Om Namo Narayana into the patient's ear would help. A few drops of water in which basil leaves have been soaked would help clear the air passage. Mother is 87. After her eldest son died in the wake of an abdominal surgery, she lost her memory. Something akin to Alzheimer's disease set in. All she could remember afterwards was the savings account she had at the Canara Bank. She feared constantly that some wily relative might find a way to misappropriate it.

Mother was a follower of Mahatma Gandhi right from her 19th year, which was the time when father married her. Father worked for a British automobile firm in Calcutta and could not afford to wear khaddar in public. Therefore he requested mother to abandon her good muslins and jewels to show the world that she was Gandhian.

Gandhism was fashionable then. It tasted like forbidden fruit. The freedom fighters knew that they might have to face lathi charges and imprisonment. Every youth needs a cause to fight for, a chance to appear noble in other's eyes. The freedom struggle gave them a chance to become heroes and heroines.

Mother did not require coarse, homespun khaddar to turn herself into a role model. She wrote poetry. She wrote before India attained her freedom. She wrote after India became free. Freedom was a word bandied about, a word they cradled tenderly on their tongues. Indians took freedom with a great deal of surprise. The British too were surprised. There was a period of numbness, when even thinking of it was not an easy feat. To this day, I do not know how the British reconciled themselves to the loss of the Empire. They must regret the 'noblesse oblige' policy they adopted when Mahatma Gandhi and his vast following carried it off with élan.

Mother wrote poetry, lying on her tummy on the four poster that was as big as a standard bedroom. We lived in a large apartment above the showroom of the Walfords Transport Company Ltd at 117 Park Street. It was close to the European cemetery where marigolds bloomed and bougainvillea climbed the minarets of graves. As children, my brother and I played around in the cemetery and read the inscriptions on the old tombstones.

Both mother and father were busy people and talked little with us. Mother had had a few epileptic fits when we were children. But now, after a long span of quiet years, she was getting them again. Her body grew stiff. Her face turned blue. Her feet grew very cold. Was she dying, I wondered? We were at a loss all of a sudden. Once upon a time, there were experts in our village who knew how to guide the dying into realms of repose, chanting soothing rhymes, giving them a conceptual hand to clutch at during the perilous journey to another world.

Mother had an another seizure the next morning, but it was milder and more bearable. Now she works her poor mouth, uttering incoherent sounds and curls and uncurls her fingers. Waves of guilt rush over us, her children, for not having listened intently when she talked once coherently, and with brilliance.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier