"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride"---is a proverb, that perhaps, all of us had learnt in our school days...and we had often given ourselves up to imaginations that led us into a world of impossible dreams fulfilled.
With growing years the reality dawned that horses cannot fulfill our
dreams...it just needs an ardent sincerity of wishing that makes a wish come true....so deep should be the sincerity that it would seem it got fulfilled from heaven itself...I have seen it happen..if language permits I can say wishes can be fulfilled "posthumously" too. I have experienced it.
My masi-in-law brings before me, the picture of a bone slim, middle aged widow in her late sixties, fit as a fiddle, very confident, punctual to the tick of a clock, very efficient as a housewife, running her domestic life with full perfection as the empress of her simple ordinary empire--her home.
I simply admired her way of life, very meticulous about every angle of her role as the Lady of her house. Her larder, her pantry was a very tempting corner in her home, and it was not rare when she would serve out some delicacy from her store..her home made jam, jellies, pickles on a spoon or a simple plate..no ostentatious presentation...her loving informal presentation made up for the best crockery.
Masi had a soft heart for me, felt me as her confidant in many matters---so it was often, on relaxed afternoons , when she would visit me and give vent to her pent up grievances which she could not open out to any other.I would lend her an attentive ear, just hearing her without much commenting or remarks, she loved this attentive hearing of mine and slowly there developed a strong bonding that deepened with the years...me, the single 'audience' and she the 'speaker'. This friendly relationship made its way through many ups and downs of her life as well as mine; but both of us enjoyed each other's role of "you hear I say".
As age advanced , there slowly clouded the dark shadows of the end of the journey of this relaxed friendship of ours...she was detected of cancer and that too in its last stage. The news came as a jolt to the whole family.Being my mother in law's younger sister the shocking news shook us all. Masi was admitted in hospital, she was not in visible pain, though it was clearly seen how the killer disease was gnawing her from within. Despite many relatives, many well wishers, it was me who attended her in hospital....it was a willingly accepted duty by me when I saw no other come forward easily.
So started my session of sitting at the bed side of a person whose days were numbered. I went daily and just sat as if we both were again to ourselves gossiping, me again the 'audience' and she the 'speaker'. She seemed so out of place away from her home--her pantry...I tried to pick up such topics that her spirits could be revived.... so would ask her to relate some old funny incident or teach me some yummy dish of hers. She spoke, but her smile had lost its vivacity and spirit; she would relate about her pantry, her jellies, her pickles, all that were now lying unattended for so many days. She would relate all this with a sad nostalgic note---as if all lost, never to be lived in or returned again, I could feel the weight of her painful emotions as she spoke of her so well equipped pantry, her own little pleasures that she found in setting everything, she would perhaps visualise how all this will soon be waste for outsiders to plunder and throw away. It was then that she may have felt a suffocation at her helplessness to fight destiny that was drawing to a close for her. Perhaps it was this strangulating feeling that made her make a simple wish, it perhaps came from the core of her heart-- she said " I wish I could have given you my own made jam and pickles before I came to the hospital, but a thing that I would love to give you are my own hand made dal baris, you will love them...tell Geeta(her daughter) to give them to you"----I , as always, heard her, just heard her, and let it go down within me. I did not want to tell this to anyone, it was a simple wish of a dying person that would have no any meaning for anyone else.
Days moved on, her condition deteriorated----we knew the the end was nearing, as she slowly moved on to state of coma. Doctors, close relatives hovered around her as the end stalked in, and I took backstage to see it all happen. She passed away.
More than being shaken emotionally I was flooded with memories of my gossip sessions with her---what all she spoke, what all I would hear.I was deep down in memory while her own kin were there to see into her belongings, her house, her home and her beloved pantry. Years moved---her daughter, Geeta, who resided in a different city would come in six months to look into her mother's house, would dispose off the furniture, draperies or carry some of the best items in portable bulks. She often told me that she would deal with the pantry last, as it was full of grains and jams and pickles which she would have to throw away as all must be infested by insects and termites in these two years. I just heard her, there was nothing for me to advise in this. All household things were gone.
It was the last day, Geeta made her last trip to her mother's house to throw off the last items of her mother's pantry,clean the house and then come to me before leaving us. By evening she returned tired with the whole day's exertion, holding a few bottles and bags and paper wrappers, things that she wanted to keep as sentiment. While keeping her things, she handed me a newspaper wrapper packet, saying, "you keep this and use it up remembering Ma". As I held up my palm to take it, a huge surge of memory gushed in within me--- in the packet were ten to twelve pieces of dal baris!!--those same baris which two years back masi had asked me to take from her pantry, as she lay in her hospital bed counting her last days. As I opened the packet and looked on to the neatly shaped baris, crisp dried, not a single termite or insect in them, I remained amazed at the reality of the moment, felt it some super natural hand wielding the whole thing, some unseen force that lay in the wish of a dying person--- a wish of a person who did not have a horse to ride on and wanted to get it fulfilled, it came from the depths of the heart of a loving masi whose love defied death and destiny and had her wish fulfilled. I thanked her in silence as my mind once again relived my days of gossip with her, only that I was still the audience, but all alone with my speaker no more.
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