OH! MOTHER, WRONG TIME

My hands were trembling. Eyes became foggy. Heartbeats were just hammering. My brother’s letter was in hand. My mind could not believe it. He wrote, “Raoji – we lost our mother last week”. My mother expired, she was no more! Now I would not see her any more! No! No! It is false. Total lie! God cannot be so cruel with me! I cried and cried days and nights! For whom I struggled so hard! Mother! You were my inspiration! I fulfilled my promise of education! “I brought good days for you and now you left me! Mother, you did not keep your promise!” I did not know how many times I repeated these words in my mind and wept till I reached home taking 10 days casual leave.

My brother took me to cemetery and showed me the grave where our mother was buried. Sitting near the fresh heap of earth I wept and wept. How long I did not know, at last my brother held my arms and led me to home. I could not take food! Literally I had left taking meals. On 5^th day Dada (my elder brother) consoled me telling, “Everybody would die. We did not have grandfather, grandmother or father with us. They too died. One day I shall die so you too! This is nature’s cycle! Don’t cry! Your weeping would not bring our mother back. Better think about your future and future of living people”. Dada’s sermon though very realistic, could not stop my crying. We finished mother’s last rites. Before leaving I again went to the grave and paid my tearful last respect.

At Shegaon railway station Dada repeated his advice and the train moved. My brother left but my mother could not leave me. In the train her entire life canvas appeared before my eyes.

My mother was illiterate. She would very rarely speak. But her silence spoke a lot. She never quarrelled with anybody. She showed equal love and affection for everybody. I never heard her scolding her daughters-in-law. Due to my father’s early death she had to work very hard to feed her five children. I remembered how she used to wrap me in her half lugade (A nine yard long women’s ware) to protect me from sever cold in winter, how she would keep her lugade’s last portion on my head to protect me from rain during monsoon and she used to keep entire bread before me saying she was not hungry so that I could eat a little more! Her restlessness and helplessness at Wadi and Jadhav’s hostel at Khamgaon was a pathetic story of a helpless mother who desired her son to become a big man !

 Yes, I accepted my brother’s realistic advice, but the nature should be so unrealistic to snatch away a wrong person at right time? After joining my duties at MRC, I prayed daily asking God to send my mother in my dream. And truly I saw her in my dream almost daily but never she spoke to me.