Short Story: The Mother

She was a little over thirty-five. Though the lines on her face made her look much older. She sat there in dead silence, on a rusty little bed of the general ward with the cold, shriveled body of a six year old boy in her lap. On the parched, lifeless mouth of the boy rested a serene smile. One that conveyed a kind of blissful comfort that only death can bring.

A gentle, quivering lullaby filled the room as she sat there rocking not the boy, but herself back to sanity. She sat there in that position for nearly an hour. Staring at the dusty poster of Mother Teresa on the wall in front of her. Singing to her son.

A distant clock struck four. As if waking from a deep slumber, she looked at the once lively face of her son for the first time ever since he breathed his last. With the crumpled end of her sari, she wiped the face and moved a stray lock of hair back in place. Through tears that she could no longer hold, she smiled at the innocent face and kissed the cold forehead. The hustle bustle of the hospital was beginning to take form. Very gently she lay the boy on the bed, slowly unwinding the numerous tubes and needles. Needles that pricked her heart as much as they did the boy's body day in and day out. Needles that made the bravest boy in the neighbourhood say, "माँ, बहुत दुखता है. घर ले चलो ना, माँ." ("Ma, I am in pain. Take me home, Ma.") One gully cricket match had ended up with her son in the emergency ward. If only she had not given him permission to play that evening. If only she had seen the car approaching. If only.

No. There was not a moment to be lost. She needed to find the nurse on morning duty and give her the news. News she had seen in their eyes every single time they watched the little boy writhe in pain. News she had heard in her son's moans for the last two weeks. News that echoed in every silent visit the doctors made by the bedside.

The life-support equipment did little to allay the pain he felt. But it did a lot to run her purse dry. Every afternoon she helplessly watched her nine year old daughter pant her way into the general ward, with a boxful of rice and dal, breathless with the fatigue of daily chores.

"Not any more", she said to herself. A current of cold air hit her face. Someone had left the front door open. She reached for a blanket and placed it on the boy's legs. As mothers do.

*

Sona quit school ever since her brother's treatment started. She now worked as a maid in the apartments across the street. Every afternoon she stepped in to bring lunch for her mother and spent an hour in the hospital talking to her little brother about the school she never went to. Her mother made compulsory attempts to bathe and eat.

With each passing day, her hopes of watching her brother play cricket with the other boys of their neighbourhood diminished. So did the amount of dal-rice she brought in every day. Times were hard. And harder she worked. Thanking God every morning that there were people in the city who wanted their dishes cleaned and floors scrubbed and didn't care about child labour laws.

She had grown up hearing from her mother that she had a heart-valve disease. She did not quite understand what it meant. But it seemed to make sense now since, unlike other girls of her age, she gasped for breath whenever she walked a few meters with a bucketful of water.

This morning, Sona was about to light up the stove and set the rice for cooking. Every inch of her body ached as she prepared for the day's work. She wheezed all night and could no longer get any sleep. A loud banging at the door startled her. It was Bhikhu's son. Bhikhu, the owner of a grocery store, lived two houses away and was the only one in the lane who enjoyed the luxury of a phone connection. There was a phone call from the hospital. Drop everything she was doing and catch the first local, her mother had instructed. The ten year old boy shoved a crumpled twenty rupee note in her hand and ran away.

She snuffed out the fire, pulled her dupatta from under the pillow and ran out without locking the door. Freedom from lock and key is perhaps one of the few perks of belonging to the dreadful lower middle class in a city like ours.

Through the windows of the bus, she watched the city wake up to the promises of another morning. Tears welled up in her eyes. Tears of not being able to pick another fight over the last slice of mango with her brother. Tears of not being able to chase him with a cane for ruining her rangoli. Tears of not being able to sneak out of the room in the night to do his homework for him. Tears of not being able to see her brother ever again.

At about the same moment, a lady in a crumpled sari sat motionless on a peeling white bench outside the general ward. Waiting impatiently to see the one face around which her life now revolved.

In every tranquil breath that her daughter would take from now, she would hear her son's heart beating.

That is what had given her the courage to switch off the life-support system last night. She had saved her son's life. In her daughter.