The Son Beams

 Raju was the sunbeam of Aai's life. Eternally. She gave him such a wonderful name, Parag. Never she called him `Parag' though. Raju he was forever for her. Let us hence unfold the moniker as an acronym as she would define it. R(are)A(mazing)J(ovial)U(biquitous) is how she thought of Raju.

Indeed Raju was an omnipresent leitmotif in Aai's narrative. Each one of her stories was centered around him. Every Friday, at about 7 p.m.-ish, she would anxiously await his phone call. Half past seven was the outer limit of her patient wait. Every minute thereafter, she would be on oxygen, and I had to call him up. Actually, there never used to be (m)any variations in their Friday phone talk . It would always be, "Aalaas? Ghe vishranti." But it was the "open sesame'' to her weekend because thus would begin the wait for his sure shot Saturday visit. He mattered the most to her .    

May be, that was because she literally pulled him out of the jaws of death when he was a baby. Such a child is always precious to a mother. It could also be because he was her first son. When in the twenty-first century so-called modern families hanker for a son, such a predilection could be probable then. Personally I think though that she basically loved him a lot.

 It could also be his profession that made him the center of her universe. In the mid-eighties, with no mobiles around, Raju's shippie seafaring ventures must have been very, very difficult for them both. Months on end, till his boat reached the next port, there would be neither a phone nor a letter. In Aai's opinion, water and air were the two of the panch-mahabhuta's (universal principles) that were the ultimate terrors, and his professional life was immersed in jal  and vayu!

One of his assignments once was really longish, and the marine route would touch Calcutta for a day. Both of them went to Calcutta to meet him for a few hours. He was with them for an hour or so, and when he left, for hours on end,  she could only see that road, she used to say. Yet another favourite memory was his first day at school.  She never forgot the way he cried for Aai that day. He was indeed the sunbeam of her life.  

Actually, Raju was Papa's weak spot, too. The way Papa on principle tried to fight the injustice meted out to Raju, an Inter student with first class marks, in engineering seat allocation, given the S.Y.J.C. onslaught that very year, was indeed epic.  Once Raju opted for the merchany navy profession, till 1998, every Narali Pournima, Papa used to without fail offer the propitiatory coconut to the sea as the call for its blessings. Multiple are such memories that engulf  the mind.

Oh, that, of course, does not mean that either was possessive or domineering. So long as the basic familial traditions were not forgotten, he was their ultimate pride. They adored his prosperity, his happy family life, the works. 

Now that neither is there, the continuity of their feel is the only thing left in revering their feelings for him. His birthday, June 7, was special because it used to be, in the pre-environmental-destruction days, the onset of the mriga nakshatra. So, as ever, my day began with the customary eating of asafoetida, turmeric and cumin powder, as essential to health as he was to their very well-being. Let me end the blog today with Wordsworth's

"So was it when my life began:

So it is now I am a man;

So be it when I grow old...

The child is father of the man!"

pratima@ "dev jari maj kadhi bhetla" a song Aai adored and in my opinion Aai meant it for Raju