SUNIL SHARMA - THIS MOTHER'S DAY

Sunil Sharma is Mumbai-based senior academic, critic, literary editor and author with 19 published books: Six collections of poetry; two of short fiction; one novel; a critical study of the novel, and, eight joint anthologies on prose, poetry and criticism, and, one joint poetry collection. He is a recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ inaugural Poet of the Year award---2012. His poems were published in the prestigious UN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, in the year 2015.
 
Sunil edits the English section of the monthly bilingual journal Setu published from Pittsburgh, USA:
 http://www.setumag.com/p/setu-home.html
 
For more details, please visit the blog:
http://www.drsunilsharma.blogspot.in/

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THIS MOTHER’S DAY
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​It was not planned---the finale.
Many a time, it cannot be planned also: impromptu actions and their consequences that can pan out in any direction, unseen by the doer, at the time of their initiation.
Often they happen, almost spontaneously.
It was same on that day which dawned ordinarily but ended as extraordinary---two random things unfolding within hours of each other; unrelated, casual on the outside, yet intrinsically interconnected from the inside by an overarching mind.
Here is a brief account of the first action that triggered the second, albeit indirectly:
The working day unspooled slowly and as usual: Dull and boring in its repetitiveness and predictability.
Mechanical in its rotation.
The presiding deity of the small and dimly-lit shop was a certain Ronnie Sanchez. In real-time, a typical old-Delhite Ravinder Singh (RS), owner of a hardware store in the historic Chandni Chowk crawling with people, carts, buses and animals; he, of a fierce beard, pierced ears and a beer belly hanging as a mini sack over a ripped and slim-fit denim jeans; the belly giving RS the nightmares, despite being sucked in constantly before a camera, relatives and young females. A pugnacious nose and a pair of blood-shot eyes turned the round visage terrifying. Panting and cursing, most of the time due to bad business and unrecovered money and, of course, health issues that plague obese middle-class everywhere, due to their lifestyle.
A commonplace man, RS hated everything commonplace about him. This life-long hatred of the everyday had prompted RS to invent an online persona with a sexy western name and a re-imagined background in Villanueva de los Infantes. He had carefully fashioned a matching history and genealogy of his clan located in that old Spanish hamlet covered with the accumulated layers of the past, myth, memory and legend---much like a writer or an adman.
The clever mix of the two twin narratives of an exotic identity and geography intrigued his social-media followers but he got them all fooled by an almost-daily posting of a series of the place- visuals garnished with select trivia. A half-obscured profile picture added a sense of mystery to the character, the outlined face strongly suggesting a famous knight that had roamed the countryside seeking out adventures in dusty plains and everyday settings, some four hundred years ago. That epic journey continues to fascinate the world in its post-industrial avatar.
So that is your RS, inhabiting two spheres, navigating both the on- and off-line universes, easily. That kept him busy, this daily orbiting and operating in the cyber and real spaces, and added spice to a dull and time-determined existence on Mr. Sammler’s Planet.
On that plain-Vanilla afternoon, our protagonist RS rudely realizes he has forgotten to wish his 72-year-old mother on a day when the whole busy world was busy greeting mothers either through the forwarded WhatsApp messages or free video or phone calls. Post-lunch, he chanced to see a FB post: The image of a woman, big tear drops glittering on a withered face, and a catchy, heart-stopping, title: Did you call your Ma to-day?
To his horror, RS realized that he had failed in this yearly obligation to a mother whom he once adored!
My Gawd! It is Mother’s Day! I totally forgot to call her up!!!
He felt guilty and morose.
How could he miss such a global ritual of remembrance to absent mums?
RS blamed his failing memory. And info overload, too.
You are a bad boy, Ronnie! Very bad boy!!!
His vestigial conscience began troubling him.
Bad! Bad!
The shopkeeper frantically began searching the elusive number, got that and made a WhatsApp voice- call.
After two attempts, a feeble voice said: Hullo!
It seemed to be rising up from a deep gorge to his mind hooked on video games.
---Ma, this is Ronnie.
---Ronnie?
---Yes. Ronnie, Ma. Your first-born son.
---Ronnie? Who Ronnie? I do not have any Ronnie as my son.
---Oh, I mean, your own Ravinder Singh.
It took few seconds to sink in. She brightened up.
---Oh. Ravinder. How are you beta?
---I am fine. You?
---Waiting.
---Whom?
---Death.
The defeatism stunned and same instant defeated the buoyancy of RS.
---O, na, Ma, na. Do not. Do not ever say that. You will live up to a hundred years and continue to bless your brood.
In reply, Ma coughed more. The severe bout gradually subsided. She recovered breath. It sounded laborious, raspy and staccato.
RS got real worried.
---Ma, you all right?
---Going on because of His grace only.
---How are they? Looking after your every need there. They said they would…they are charging huge amount. Let me know.
She paused, breathing heavily. Then in a wheezing tone:
---They are they.
---Means?
---They can never become like our own. How can they?
A heavy pause, again. Breath coming in slow gasps.
Ravinder searched for the right words, mind suddenly blank.
Finally, he could mumble:
---Need money, Ma?
---No, beta. Got pension. Do not want anything from the children. Want to die… peacefully.
Ravinder Singh got flustered again by the turn in the conversation.
---Should I send cash?
---No need. Don’t. Got enough.
And then, she asked out of the blue: When you coming to see an ailing mother?
There was urgency in that tone.
Ravinder Singh was caught unawares by the simple maternal demand. She waited. After few seconds, RS pretended he had missed out on that part and yelled:
--- Hullo. Hullo. Hullo. Cannot hear. Can you hear me?
---Yes...
Then the call dropped at that point, as if done deliberately by a mischievous force. He stared at the phone for long, uncertain. Fiddled with the iPhone, bit absent-mindedly. Then heaved a long sigh and slid the toy into left-hand pocket of his Safari suit.
I called her up! That is important. He thought satisfactorily.
Soon the other distractions---haggling customers; cold calls; bad debts, dealers’ calls and WhatsApp messages--- made his brain delete Ma from the main menu.
 
The afternoon dragged on. Nothing substantial.
The sameness of the routine bored RS. He sat robotic in his throne, a padded ergonomically-designed swivel chair and fiddled with the toy or the laptop or watched the road ahead.
Then the second incident happened.
Early evening.
Traffic had worsened on the congested streets. There was loud honking that further irritated RS. Business got slower. He waited for the night and binge-drinking in the bedroom before late dinner.
At that point, an old beggar turned up, bony claw extended; eyes squinting, due to cataract; dirt-encrusted hair and forehead---a picture of abject poverty and helplessness; a destitute depending, in theory, on the charity of a positive society. His assistant would often shoo her off. This hour, he was not there. When RS looked up from the smart gadget, he was stunned to see his mother’s teary face looking back.
It was unsettling!
His mother standing on the threshold of the shop!
The likeness was uncanny!
Ma staring back from that weather-beaten face; pleading, hands folded in despair, hair thinning, eyes watery and gait unsteady.
For a long second, he continued to look at a face no longer familiar; his heart missing a beat; legs giving away---Ma had come down to visit her first-born, although in a different form! He grew speechless; seeing mortality, kinship and family in that single instant and in that pathetic figure, reduced to begging; maybe abandoned; her dignity and humanness destroyed totally by a negative society. The market was coming to life. Lights were coming on, dispelling darkness.
---O, beta!
The tone eerily sounded similar and the word beta!
RS, first time, felt hollow inside. Voids opened up and arteries froze. What does God want to convey through this striking resemblance?
How is her ailing mother there?
He fished out a hundred, stood up, gave the money and folded his hands respectfully. The beggar raised her hands in blessings and moved on, moved by this act. He saw her take tired steps, the exhausted body and a mind that expected nothing miraculous. She was sadness personified. That was not the end.
It was the beginning of the end.
The woman sat down few feet away, near the stained column of the narrow bazaar, a huddled figure, holding her bundles. Then she took out a plastic bottle and took few sips. It was May and Delhi summer was blazing. Hot wind blew across the corridor.
Then RS heard a piercing scream!
He leaned over the counter and bent a glance at her direction.
A drug addict was trying to steal her rupees. Few bystanders immediately crowded her, taking a video of the scene---the unfazed mugger and a hapless senior homeless woman and people shooting videos.
The drug addict was trying to snatch her battered purse; she was giving a tough fight, screaming and pleading simultaneously with the crazed man in his thirties.
 
Something snapped inside RS.
He leapt over the counter, reached the victim in few long strides and gave the addict a big punch that made him fly in the polluted air. The loafers crazily clicking pictures of the sudden arrival of a super-hero in those dingy surroundings!
Some began taking a video of the thrilling episode with unlikely actors.
Then, the action, slow-motion:
He gave back the purse to the terrified woman, grasped her hand, guided her back to his shop, his other hand holding her patched bags. Made her sit down on the steps of his shop and ordered a cold drink and a pizza for her.
The crowd began swelling. It went berserk. Everybody wanted a selfie with the new savior who kept on grinning into each camera, bit fuddled by the attention.
Then the mania picked up on social media. The video of saving a beggar by a burly man got millions of hit. Within hour and a half, his status changed from a non-descript guy to a celeb super-hero with a conscience. Of course, by night he was forgotten also!
He did not mind---our RS. Few seconds of unintended fame were enough for him.
That night, to the surprise of the nuclear family, RS did not drink, cuss and abuse; he ate fast and retired to bed early; made quick love to an equally surprised and then delighted wife, cooing into her ears, bit tender in approach, not rough and businesslike. The obese woman otherwise deprived of such conjugal rights and intimate moments and afterwards thanked God for such a dramatic change in her fortunes and prayed for a longer spell of the good luck for her, while her man slept soundly, sometimes snoring loudly.
 
At dawn, he dreamed his Ma smiling, holding a small hand and walking him, a beaming boy of nine, to the nearby public garden. Both spending time in a garden that once really bloomed, thanks to a caring municipal gardener.
Ma chatted with the boy, asking him about his dreams. She talked about their common hero---a soldier and a doting father, away on the front.
Then RS woke up.
 
---First time in my life I had seen you crying in your sleep.
His wife told him over the breakfast.
---Was that a nightmare?
---No. The sweetest dream so far.
He replied and smiled.