What makes an 80-year-old remain young forever and feeling fulsome even when alone

Forty years or so ago, Mom started taking Gita classes. This was that period when Dadi, my paternal grandmother, ran our house, and Mom managed to keep her, my father, the staff, and us siblings, three of the most boisterous and rambunctious kids, happy and together. How Mum got away for two hours each week was a miracle then, and, perhaps, that much needed salve that gave her a couple of hours to breathe and see herself as an individual and to find time to fuel her own soul with what was most elusive for her — a chance to be able to do something, anything that didn’t include my grandmother and our nuclear family unit and the extended relatives. This weekly outing in the morning for a couple of hours didn’t raise my grandma’s eyebrows and wasn’t noticed by us kids, as we were at school. The only other time my mum had alone was after tucking us into bed, when she would record books on to tapes for the library at the Blind School.

These days when Swami ji is in town giving classes, Mom is busy sometimes three or four mornings every week. There are mornings when she takes a class on the Gita and another on the Upanishad or the Vedas. When in town and at home in Delhi, I know I mustn’t be lazy about heading to Mom’s floor for breakfast, as she is out sooner than later. My brother and I might still be in our night garb, but Mum is attired in a crisp handloom sari, ready to start her day. Her eyes have a hungry sparkle and her smile a radiance which is mirroring the hungry anticipation with which she is waiting to be at class. These lessons on Vedanta – this yearning to learn the art of living without fuss or muss, with a total abandoning of all that arrests our minds and thus ails our bodies and souls – are keeping Mom youthful and energetic, radiant and exemplary, independent and daring, self-reliant and never lonely.

I find Mom often sitting with a stack of notebooks, some more frayed than others, full of jottings. Many times I see her radiating an inspired smile, and I have been compelled to ask her what is it that captivates her that moment, and she will read me a line or two from a lesson. As deeply as I have loved and studied the Gita myself, it gives me comfort to listen to her, and through her find a very modern approach to living, loving, sharing and caring. What Dadi and our family chef, Pandit ji taught me from a young age comes alive in the explanations given to Mom by Swami ji. These exchanges with her also bring alive my incredibly brilliant nana, my maternal grandfather Chaman Lal Bhardwaj. He was a man of the world, and the world was lucky to have had such a man walk on its lap.

When I find Mom checking the same verse in two or three notebooks, she shares with me the evolution of Swami ji as both a human and a scholar of Vedanta. Through his elasticity in grasping a verse with greater humility and appreciation as his world expanded its own human horizons, Swami ji shows Mom and others the key to living a life well lived. Pedantic knowledge is anathema to a Vedantic approach to life, learning and spirituality, and so it is most strange to see such passionate and blind ritualistic following by a people whose religion has no prescription for the following of rituals. Unlike ecclesiastical laws that have been in existence for centuries, the dogma that is gripping Hinduism is very new in comparison. Mom loves spending time on Swami ji’s interpretation of one verse and then examining how that translation changed with the political and cultural ethos of any given time, and how natural calamities, social moods and currents affect and influence how he reacts to a book, verse or word. I have found Mom marvelling at his growth, as a teacher, scholar and citizen, of India and the world. The more isolated a time might make the mood of our nation or the pulse of the world, the more Mom has found Swami ji’s discourses become all about inclusion and the oneness of all life.

The wind beneath my mother’s wings is the power of having learned the lesson about being selfless and moving toward that goal that unites us with the one that is the creator and that driving engine of all who have life, shape and form. Mum was disappointed that the website of a governmental agency would be poorly managed, but she was happy to take care of the issue at hand herself. Where I am satisfied to delegate and use another, Mom, who is much older, is happy to take charge. She unshackles herself from baldly ugly materialism and a world lived most carelessly and without a connection to self and our fellow humans. Her approach through a lifetime lost to Vedanta has made her compassionate and gracious enough to save another from having to tackle what she herself is loathe to. Unafraid to work and totally not wallowing in self-pity, Mom finds youth and spring in her step by not wanting to be a burden on another and robbing them of time they ought to spend on their own journeys. She takes on the vagaries and burdens of others, knits and stitches, gardens and takes music lessons, cares for my siblings, nephew, relatives and me, and in doing so, remains forever young, deeply connected to us, and guiding us to be busy in a way that makes us feel fulfilled and fulsome even when all alone.