Big Mother Bear

She was one of the two unmarried women who brought me up. No, Bada mummy did not bring me up; rather she freed me to grow up. Often I called her Gudunu, a name which connoted nothing, signified nothing. She was Bada Mummy mainly for three good reasons- first, she was the elder of the two parents, second she was a big woman, a well robust one with an admirable height of 5’6.And third, she had a big heart.

Gudunu was the color of warm ochre, with full, distinct lips and a round, child- like face. Even at the seasoned age of seventy nine, she was always dressed appropriately with her near grey hair neatly oiled and pulled back to a bun fastened by hair pins. She immaculately wore sheer chiffon saris on a sleeveless blouse and had minimal ornaments on her-a gold band on her wrist and a thin chain around her neck.

She was a rather ordinary, uncomplicated and an unassuming individual- nothing one needed to look up to. Yet, it is from her that I learnt to live life as a luxury and to rejoice live as a treat. For her, failure and fall in life were acceptable. The craft was to move ahead with élan. She publicly confessed unapologetically, to be attached to life’s materialism and to love life and its goodies .She was sometimes selfish, sometimes attention seeking and sometimes plain obstinate. Yet, on seeing her one felt an urge to hug her.
Bada mummy was like a breath of mint air to my rather staid live. She introduced me to my happy, sportive self. When she was in her sixties, I was entering my teens. Like an untypical adult, we shared naughty jokes, sign languages, impossible dreams, senseless jabber, tips on beauty and hair care, fought at times, discussed crushes, secrets, watched spine chilling ghost stories on television and swapped novels.

I have always confidently accredited my personality to have germinated from her. Through her I learnt to dream without reason, to love without care, to dress up, to dress down, to watch Western movies, to appreciate fine architecture, to enjoy gardening., to neatly manage a house, to drink tea from china -ware, to enjoy sinfully rich food, the nuances of cooking ,to acquire a pet, to love the shade grey, to be diplomatic, to be painfully frank, to sometimes behave with necessary etiquettes, to be allowed to cry alone and the freedom to be open to everything.

She was a free spirit, a lady who would wear salwar kameez in her nursing hostel days at Delhi, cycled to the India Gate on Sundays, read Bengali literature, jumped the campus wall and visited late night shows in cinema theatres, wore boots, kept a Muslim cook when caste was a big issue and was non religious –all this post independence, in the late fifties when women were yet confined in terms of place, dreams and education. She was a pioneer as she became the first woman of the state of Orissa to have achieved a Masters degree in Nursing in those conservative times when women were ascribed the role of being only women….
Bada Mummy has had her part of sufferings, too. She had one leg of filariasis, had lost her youth’s dreams of love and family and had emptied herself from home to live alone with Choto Mummy. Yet, she did not dwell in her past much. Rarely did she become quiet and retrospective.

My Gudunu died two years back of multi organ failure. After years of intense yearning, now I have no regret, for I understand that everything good is not necessarily immortal. At a time when her whole body was infected with septicemia and she would be vomiting around thirty times a day, she would weakly inform me that she is better, lest I worry. In those dark days, torn between baby care of my four months daughter and the wish to be near her, I could do nothing, except pray. I prayed hard that she should not die and she kept on surviving and suffering. Till a day, when I willed god to make up his mind quickly, to take her if he had to and relieve her of pain, puss and plight. That rainy night, on the nineteenth of September, she gasped her last and slowly slipped away.