I have never become reconciled to the fact that my mother had lust, although she undoubtedly had as she was a human being. The only time I had a sneaking suspicion that she could have it when I heard her laugh and giggle with my maternal aunt about which I knew was an edition of Playboy magazine which my father brought home and I duly found out. I had no doubt that my father had lust because I frequently found pornographic books in hidden places which I had little difficulty in finding. But my mother seemed different. She always seemed the person who was rebuking about naughty thoughts and telling me subconsciously not to do “it”. I had enough confirmation of this one day when I was playing under a quilt with my little thing beside my sleeping mother when she suddenly got up and in a very stern voice told me not to do what I was doing.
She was a person who cared too much for me. And I hated this. She would not let me do any “ good” thing ( like going alone out of the house for some adventure in the afternoons when my mother took a nap). She was a “coward”. My father on the other hand was a brave man. He had crossed and came back swimming Hooghly River many times in his child hood at Srirampur. But he was a strict man, very cautious about money and my mother and he had frequent fights about how meager amount he let her spend. My mother also cried frequently and reminded my father umpteenth times that he did not “love” her. I believed her. Because my father was a very tactless man who told very rude things to people telling exactly what he thought. Also there was this “other woman” in his life who was very beautiful but vapid and empty whose family my father perhaps helped. But as days go by and I find so many similarities with my father in myself I doubt my mother’s words. Just like him I could not express my softer emotions in so many words and in gestures and when I think about those days I guess perhaps he was too shy to express his love.That my mother was a loving and soft woman I had no doubt. Particularly to me. As I got back from my school and sat to eat my meal she would make crow’s lump and crane’s lump (kager dola, boger dola in Bengali) with rice and daal and sabji and as I told her a completely fictitious story about how I caught a shoal fish in a drain in the monsoon floods she would just smile as if she believed all this and put those lumps in my unsuspecting mouth.
In the afternoon she would take a nap. I would jump around and play in the empty house when my mother would get very irritated and would tell me sternly to sleep quietly beside her. I, after vehement protests had to comply with her because force would be applied on me. I would lie quietly beside my mother facing her as she snoozed and fantasize of scoring centuries in cricket test matches and goals against East Bengal club in soccer.
From the beginning of my conscious life I had one aim and that was to make my “unhappy” mother happy and proud for me. She was a very soft woman, loved me dearly and cried so much because of her quarrels with my father because father did not give her enough money and rebuked her if he himself lost something or told her bluntly that her cooking was not good if there was a little more chili in the food than his liking. Once there was a big confrontation between them and mother seriously threatened to leave the house and went quite a few paces towards the exit door. I was a little child then and I panicked and put my two little arms around her waist tightly so that she would not go. She cried and desisted from what she was about to do.
I was a little better than average student in school and my yearly report cards were a bit better than average. My parents looked up to me and hoped this “ bright” boy would do something good in his life. I did somewhat good in my school leaving exam and got a chance in a good engineering college which was not so easy those days. My mother was proud of me. Although engineering was not what I liked (it was physics I liked most) I joined engineering college so that I could earn a lot and make my mother happy (although not getting a chance in the physics department of the two most coveted colleges in Calcutta compounded the decision making). I did not want to be a student of B.Sc in an ordinary college but a wealthy engineer son of a proud and happy mother and give her as much money she liked. The inner unhappiness of studying and doing something I really did not like was the main cause of my downturn much later in my life.
I passed engineering with “flying” colors and got a job even before the result was announced and without even an interview. Although I left that job pretty soon I got a chance in a very renowned company within a few days and began to get a handsome salary. I would get back from office every day , very unhappy inside but waited for the salary day. When the day came I would give all the money to my mother. My dream of making my mother “happy” was coming true.Soon mother became worried about my future bride. Actually she was worried about my future wife when I was a school kid because in her opinion I “needed” a very smart woman to “take care” of me because I was so “careless” about worldly matters. After I worked in office for certain years and outwardly established myself in the world I gave the nod to my parents for my marriage. There was the usual advertisement in newspapers for brides (just like most Indians) and quite a lot of pretty and educated girls’ photos came in. I went to see a few of them and liked a girl who was not only beautiful but very vivacious.
From my mother I learned to keep lust and women apart. To me women looked so innocent and were so “clean” that they could not be capable of such “bad’ thing as lust. My mother seemed to dislike sex. Once, when I knew all about it, I asked my mother how babies were born just to check what answer she would give. My mother was irritated and said “god sends them”.
As I got older I began to learn from books women were not so “clean” as one would imagine. I was a very shy boy who never dared to approach a girl and had no sisters (even all my cousins were boys) and therefore had no firsthand experience of a woman of my compatible age. With marriage I experienced for the first time the female lust. In the eventful first night my wife expertly guided me to previously “unfamiliar territories”. Although this was very pleasurable marriage was not bliss to me as I had expected. This woman was so different from my mother. Not only she had lust but she liked and disliked things my mother did not. She laughed and cried at things which were different from what my mother laughed and cried for. I had expected her to like my soft mother and dislike my rude father whereas the opposite happened. My wife and father took instant liking for each other and my mother and wife had a lot of things to complain about each other. Soon it became a war between my mother and wife. I was confused about what to do, which side to take, and was mentally agonized. After the hard days of labor at office as I came back home I faced music from both sides equally angry with each other and finally towards me because they both thought that I had sympathy with the “other” side. That my wife was so different emotionally from my mother did not help matters at all. Because I was prepared to cope with another “mother” but not this “wild” woman.
After one year of co existing with my parents we moved to a separate dwelling partly due to the lack of space in our apartment at the advent of my elder brother’s family and partly and more importantly I wanted to keep my wife and mother apart. Although this brought slight relief my life became an unhappy existence. I missed my mother’s caring comfort and my wife was new and inexperienced in family matters like cooking and housekeeping. She was an educated woman, wrote great poems but would begin to cry if the maid did not appear in the morning. On top of that she had quite a temper. I thought my married life would be very unlike my parents because I would never deny money to my wife and never say rude words to her for bad cooking. Unfortunately she wanted more than this. She expected me to be more careful about my clothes, did not find it her duty to neating up things I messed up in my daily life like leaving dirty clothes in the toilet. She told me in so many words that my mother did not educate me to be a “proper’ man. I was terribly wounded for her disrespect for my mother and we had regular and some time stormy fights. Once in a moment of mad rage I gave her a blow in her face which caused her teeth to be reset.
But my wife loved me more than I knew. By this time I was becoming very tired of engineering chores daily and deeply craved for relief. I would come home with my brain totally tired with my office duties and yet I would begin to study higher mathematics because inwardly I had a fantastic hope of winning a Nobel Prize in physics to make my mother “happy”. The unhappy and tired brain along with a tumultuous marriage made my life miserable. The pent up unhappiness was killing me. Fortunately I slowly began to realize that my boisterous wife was a sweet child at her heart. She would try to hug me and forget all the bad things which happened a few moments before and laughed and kissed me like nothing has happened. We began to have sleepless nights telling each other our erstwhile life stories, our little things and nothings and made love wildly. By this time my wife had got a little job in a government office. I slowly found the confidence to confide to her my greatest guarded secret. I told her I wanted to leave job and liked to follow what I liked most, physics and astronomy. I wanted to know if there was life anywhere else other than earth. She told me I could do whatever I liked and she would stand rock solid with me. To this day she had done that.
Also my mother and wife began to become friends gradually. My mother gave my wife household tips and she was grateful to mother for that. Also they had the common concern for the same man, that is, I. They would share their experience about the same person they both loved and slowly they became friends. Also I began to find many things common among the two women which I had not foreseen before. They had the same feminine intelligence and stupidity I never suspected. They had the same concern that why I was not more careful. I began to become angry with my wife for the same reasons I sometimes wished to further flatten my flat nosed mother with a juicy blow. My loyalty began to shift gradually from my mother to my wife.
When I had enough confidence in my wife and my wife supported me to the hilt and the office became an unbearable hell I set a date in my diary for the “grand day”. The day I would resign from job. I had no clear idea what I would do next but in my confused mind I envisaged a grand career for my wife while I do something with physics.
After deliberating for almost a year finally the “grand day” came and I left my job after giving a very rude resignation letter saying that I hated civil engineering. With resigning came a release I never experienced before. It was like a ton of granite was lifted off my chest and I went into a state of feverish excitement. With that came a deep anxiety about how am I going to meet my expenses in future. The euphoria of release from a chain of slavery along with a very deep anxiety made me work and act in a feverish and frenzied manner and sometimes rather queerly. I went to all big newspaper for ads for job for my wife which looked rather like matrimonial ads. Also once I refused to talk with my relatives unless the servant boy was present in the conversation. My wife’s family and my family decided to take me to the top psychiatrist in Calcutta at that time. Although I agreed to go to the psychiatrist because everybody wanted me to, I refused to take any drugs which the doctor prescribed because to my mind I was wholly sane.
Next thing I remember I was inside a mental home where all my co inhabitants were to some extent in a mentally demented state. My mother’s “bright boy” was in a mental sanatorium and all her hopes were crushed. I had quite a number of colorful friends there, one of whom thought he would never be able to get up from bed although he had no problems with his legs or anywhere else. Another would laugh and cry every other moment alternately for seemingly no reason. It was like a jail with all the doors closed, toilet doors without locks and we were allowed no contact with outside world except once in a week with our relatives. We were not allowed to watch television except once in a week for an hour to watch the serial Ramayana.
When the visitor’s day came I wept to my wife and mother to take me out of the jail house and give me freedom. They also wept and did not know what to say. The doctors would take me to a chamber and give me injections after which I would go unconscious. After the consciousness came back I would feel deep pain throughout my whole body and unable to move. A burly strong man would carry me above his shoulder to the upper story where I had my room. Later on I would know that I was subjected to electric shock therapy in these occasions and some of my memory was completely wiped out from my brain. The doctors would ask me whether I liked my job or not with a peculiar, narrow smile on their lips with injection in their hand and I would say “Yes, yes. I like my job immensely and I would like to go back to my office immediately”( I figured out that those were the only words that could release me from that jail). Soon afterwards I was released from the home diagnosing my problem as affective or bipolar disorder, the general meaning of which that the guy is either in a highly excited emotional state or in a depression.
Actually this sort of disease is somewhat hereditary and I had this streak from my father’s side (my paternal aunt was a mental patient and one uncle was also visited psychiatrist).The doctor advised me to not to tell anybody that I went to a psychiatrist which I ignored and told the rest of the world that I was slightly mad. Later on I found out that my little streak of insanity makes me create and do things which others would not dare to. It was at once a disadvantage and an advantage because somehow it brought out whatever was in my depths.
However mother was inconsolable. My father sent a letter to my previous office that I lost my head and let me join the work again. They kindly agreed and I joined my office again but sat silently during office hours reading translation of Tagore’s poems. After a few days I resigned again and after the third resignation my office did not take me back.
Time moved on. I had during my office days managed to gather substantial amount of money so I could buy an apartment for myself with a little help from my father in law. My wife was also earning a little money and my father had securities and fixed deposits in joint names which matured and became very handy at this time. I tried to start a business of making telescopes which brought me a good deal of financial loss because the telescopes were highly uncompetitive price wise although they were good and there are few people interested in India to dispense with a large sum of money for some exotic interest.
I, after some hibernation took jobs as civil engineer elsewhere, in fact in quite a few places with me resigning after short spells at these offices. However around the beginning of this millennium computer and internet entered in my life and gave a new impetus to it. I became interested in the logical and mathematical part of engineering and softwares and the complete disliking turned to a partial liking. Also internet gave a chance to flower socially ( I am a rather unsocial person who likes spend most of the time at home and visiting and chatting with others was foreign to me). However you could chat with people with varied personality and interest at the repose of your home through internet. Also internet brought “women” to my life. As I said earlier I was a very shy chap in real life but I found that I also could be liked and sometimes adored by women. And finally it brought me once again to confront female lust which “mother forbade”.
Although I was going down the drain financially at least my emotional and intellectual life was flowering. Once during these days I had the opportunity to visit Haridwar and Hrishikesh and it brought me some realizations which made a deep mark inside me. I had great sleeping problem (and still have to some extent) and I had to take plethora of drugs to just make myself sleep. The visit to Hrishikesh and Haridwar somehow instilled in myself faith in God and released me from the deep anxiety which was the main enemy of sleep.
My father passed away in 2003 after the third heart attack. My mother was growing old. My mother’s complaints against my father vanished firstly because my father became a very mellowed and spiritual man in his later days and secondly my father left my mother enough money to live rest of life without worry. The thrift of my father for which my mother fought with him for such a long time resulted in a life for mother without financial worry after father’s death. She did not have to look forward to his “bright boy” for money, on the other hand my father’s left over money helped me for a long time.
My mother was also growing very old. In 2005 she had a silent stroke (which was not detected at that time) after which her health deteriorated quite dramatically. By this time the other woman, that is, my wife took over my life completely and I began to dream of making my wife “happy” instead of my mother.
In 2006 my mother had another stroke and she was hospitalized. After a few days she had to be put in ventilator for survival. My elder brother told me that it was useless because each day in ventilator was consuming a lot of money without any reasonable chance of my mother’s coming back to normalcy and life. Finally I agreed to get her out of ventilator. In the nursing home I was with my mother and all the other visiting relatives were gone. Nurse came and told the doctor that the patient was coughing. Doctor along with me went to my mother and tried suction to clear her throat. After a slight hiccup my mother’s body became still and the doctor nodded to me. My mother was gone.
The person for whom I dedicated most of life went away from earth. And I forgot her. My life was taking a new shape. I have begun to explore the cosmos with my newly bought telescope. Also I found that I could write a little. I now began to give voice to whatever realization I had in the course of my life in my writings. Also I began to do some creative work in video editing.The person who mattered most now was my wife. She had completely replaced my mother in my life as the only person I cared for. I began to search a way to make my life financially worthwhile and help my wife who was earning the livelihood for us. I began to make engineering spreadsheets which is beginning to slowly earn some money for me. Although my financial woes are far from over I have got a direction in life at last and slowly making my way up.
The other day I was pondering over my life in the morning and suddenly my forgotten mother came back to me vividly. I was tired of my worries and woes and wanted to get back to my soft mother’s fold. As I remembered my childhood days and the softness and care of my mother my eyes became slightly wet. How worried she was even if I was a little uncomfortable about anything. As I trudge my life’s path wearily alone I craved for my mother’s soft bosom. Then I realized my mother is always with me, in every cell of my body, experiencing every moment of grief and joy with me.
But the battle is not over. As I work and produce a little something everyday my hopes ignite again.
Perhaps someday, when death engulfs me I will be at ease with myself and say that “Yes, I made my mother happy.”My mother had conceived me in intense pleasure. When I return to her I hope my cosmic mother will come to me with same intense joy and tell me “You have made me proud, my bright boy.”
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