Certain memories! How they haunt forever! Usha. She was my junior. May be, we were almost the same age because I have completed my post-graduation at a very early age. I had helped her with her French and with the contents of her essay in a contest which won her a French trip.
Naturally she cared for me. The Eiffel Tower paperweight she bought me from Toulaine is a keepsake. After she got married, our rôles changed slightly. Hers was a love marriage with a Tambram.
She was a Telugu Brahmin, and a very close relative of a very very powerful leader. She had adjustment issues within the marriage, and I was the counsellor who tried to convince her how minor disagreements with in-laws could be silly misunderstandings.
Here was a quite funny situation, a Maharashtrian high caste Brahmin girl trying to explain the Tamil symbolism to a Telugu girl. Yet the underlying civilisational cultural bond seemed to carry us through, thereby making us better friends.
Unfortunately, she died within a fortnight of her baby's birth. I still cannot forget that small infant, an exact replica of his late mother, wailing away even when the poor grandma was trying her level best to comfort him.
The haunting bit, however, is still more vivid. Her husband, we had not met much, but he knew me as Usha's best well-wisher, was obviously overcome with intense grief.
Tearily he announced to the dead body. "Usha, see, Pratima is here!". I am ready to swear. Her body, tied to that pier/wooden stretcher, literally tried to get up! My other friend, who had come along, too, was shocked beyond words, mentioned it later, too.
I had never seen a 'body' before. The whole night I could not sleep. Yet this incident has forever convinced me that life might go on(!?!) even after the body dies!?! Why then hurt n harass human beings, when alive?
Much more, I understood what post-partum depression may do. Hence, however much feminism may be mocked, yes, there ARE certain, in fact, very many, womanly sensitivities that DO need deep considerations, and beyond all the shrill n empty sloganeering by n of career feminists.
Most important of all, the incident has made me forever grateful to Aai who was down with high fever when she was eight months pregnant with me, yet in the ninth month, she travelled in a meter gauge train some six/seven hundred kilometers, while the late April sun beat mercilessly. Within a week of reaching her parents' place, a small town, she walked to the hospital for a natural delivery, while the nurses were brutal, and doctors indifferent! What a mother's love can bear!
Pratima@Well, tragedies cannot last forever, and often have a funny end. Well, Usha's husband had asked me to inform a Tamil professor, all of them, unlike me, were in to Linguistics, about Usha's unfortunate demise. It was the week-end. So I decided to inform his colleague who lived on campus so that the message would reach him. I had no idea that the lady was sweet on him! First she obsessed about finding out if I had called him up. After convincing her somewhat hopefully that I knew neither his phone number nor his address, she calmed down on that account. Thereafter followed a simply wow conversation, with monkeys chattering madly overhead, hidden in the canopy. She was insisting that it was a murder. I tried to politely point out that it might not be, as Usha was closely connected with very powerful people. Then she started haranguing about how the need for such a murder (why, a 'son' was born, no?) is like the desire for sex! Thereafter, I did what all students are excellent at, obediently stand in front of the teacher, head bowed down, eyes half open, ears and brain completely closed, tightly shut indeed! Feminism sounds fun, if n when shallow!
Quote of the day: "Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.” Wise 'saw' as ever by Oscar Wilde!
Word of the day: postpartum depression Postpartum depression (also called perinatal depression) is a medical mood disorder that can happen during (late) pregnancy or after giving birth.
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