Dance of freedom

And yet, in her own small way, she too contributed a lot to humanity. A born environmentalist, she meticulously researched the harmful effects of eucalyptus at a time when ignorant governments were axing verdant sal forests to make way for them. She compiled a series of articles warning that the eucalyptus greedily devoured water and moisture and repelled the growth of flora and fauna. In fact, she predicted the water shortages and environmental ruin we are facing today. But her writings were dismissed as the ramblings of an idiot.

Every year, my mother painfully sketched her own new year cards to send to friends and relatives, oblivious to the pain in her deformed hands. She would sit by the phone and call up relatives, just to keep in touch. Few of them, happily mobile and engrossed in trivial pursuits, bothered to take the time out to visit her. Even if they did, they addressed her as “poor Patty”, not as an equal capable of conducting an intelligent conversation which did not gravitate around her illness and possible cures. She craved intellectual stimulation, someone with whom to sharpen her razor sharp wit. And despite her long illness, or perhaps because of it, she was forward-looking and compassionate, unlike the rest of her ilk.

A year before she died, God sent her on a journey which changed her life, if only for a while. My sister and her husband, then in France, insisted that she visit them there. Her first reaction was, “It’s impossible for me to travel that far.” We bulldozed her into it, and I accompanied her there. The plane journey passed off smoothly. And when we reached there, she finally started “living”. We took her everywhere — to the Louvre, to Monet’s exquisite home in the picturebook town of Giverny, to vineyards, to seaside resorts, even to supermarkets! Unlike in India, it was so easy to take her everywhere, and passersby were so helpful and friendly.

Unlike here, no-one inspected her deformed hands and feet with a shudder of horrified revulsion. In fact, in a seaside town where we had parked her literally next to the waterfront, a French gentleman came up and remarked with old world courtesy, “You have a beautiful face, Madame.” She blushed in surprise — no-one in her homeland noticed that anymore.

Not surprisingly, Mama went berserk in the supermarche. For hours she navigated her chair herself, picking gifts for everyone at home. She gloried in the freedom of being able at last to choose them herself. Somewhere towards the middle of her trip, she remarked with touching candour, “I actually feel I’m a human being, a part of life.”

After her death, we opened a letter she had left behind for us to read. In it she asked us not to grieve her death, “When you read this, I will be dancing through the trees like a bird — something I have been longing for all my life.”