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Chandra’s mother

Roopa Raveendran Menon

    Chandra slowly woke up from his sleep and sat up on his bed rubbing his stiff knee. He fumbled for his spectacles that were on his side table and placed it on his nose before reaching for his phone by his pillow. ‘Happy Birthday!’ Said a text message from a random insurance company. ‘Today, you are 60 years young.’ Chandra groaned. Well, tell that to my dried up, stump of a leg, you mutt. He rose from his bed and hobbled towards the window and pulled his green and white drapes. The sun had risen and left an orangish-yellow trail on the sky. He shuffled his way to the bathroom where he brushed his yellowing uneven teeth and rinsed his leathery face in icy cold water. As he patted his face with a dry towel, he wondered if his mother was awake and he lumbered towards her room. His mother was fast asleep. He drew her white curtains and a drizzle of honey-colored sunlight lit her face up. Despite being 85 years old, Chandra’s mother Bharati didn’t look a day older than 50. Her skin was still unlined and his palms, small and young looking were pressed together and placed on her distended belly.
    Chandra looked at her lovingly when a dark shadow crossed his mind. It was a nightmare of a long time ago. The one that had made him sweat from head to toe. He was six years old when he had had a vivid dream of his mother, her soft spongy body falling off a train and landing on a bed of stones with a crash. Her skull was split wide open like a fully ripe watermelon while her eyes were empty saucers and her legs were mangled and twisted like tree stumps. She was floating like a fetus in her pool of blood. Chandra had woken up shouting, his hands and legs shivering. He had rushed to his mother’s room where he had found her sleeping with her palms folded over her stomach that kept slowly rising and falling and her face serene like a Buddha in meditation. Chandra had put his arms around her and rested his head on her heaving chest sobbing.
    “What happened?” Bharati, Chandra’s mother had rubbed her eyes and sat up. On seeing Chandra’s tear-streaked face, she had held him close, her face lined with worry.

    Amidst snotty sniffles, Chandu had asked, “Will you be with me forever? Even after a thousand years?”
    Bharati had stifled the sudden threat of a giggle that had risen from her throat and had pulled him closer into a warm embrace. Then, brushing his hair from his forehead she had gently grazed her lips against his moist forehead and had whispered into his tender ears, “Forever. I will be with you forever. That’s a deal.”
    That was 54 years ago, Chandra thought as he choked back his tears and stroked her jet-black hair, then massaging his sore back, he slowly bent down and touched her feet. Chandra felt her papery skin rub against his palms and he winced. He dragged himself to the cupboard and took a big bottle of his special lotion, along with his yellow mask and gloves. He put on his mask and pulled on his gloves before unscrewing the bottle and dipping his brush in the bottle, and applying the contents on his mother’s dry feet in long unsteady strokes until they felt soft like a baby’s head. His mother didn’t flinch, her face looked suppliant like she was in deep meditation.
    Chandra removed his mask and gloves and watched her, tears rolling down his cheeks, tears of neither joy nor sorrow. Tears of sheer gratitude. He held her body gently and lowered his head down to her hollow chest, listening to her still heart. “Forever and forever.” He whispered into her crusty ears.

    For the last several years, Chandra had carried out the same routine but this year he was determined to get his mother a present—a spanking new glass case. She deserved it. Chandra’s mother certainly did.

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