Mizan Rahman
Once
again the burners are on in the kitchen. The stove never stopped all day.
There was hardly any need for elaborate
cooking in the house since Christmas. Our life moves on pretty well on the old microwave.
I have been on a very restrictive diet since the heart attack in ’95, and she
has been since ’75 when her kidneys were replaced. No salt, no sugar, no fat,
not much protein either. Our food doesn’t need much cooking.
But
today is different. Today a lot of frying needs to be done. A great many
‘parathas’ have to be rolled. Eggplant fries. Onion-chickpea combos. Thai
‘hilshas’ from the Bangladeshi store must be cleaned out of their foul odor,
then fried in deep oil as long as possible at high heat until they are crisp
and flaky. Rich, aromatic, basmati rice with plenty of fresh peas cooked in processed
butter. Then there must be a lot of dessert---mostly those irresistibly
delicious ‘rosogollahs’ and ’chomchoms’ that no one can make the way she does.
No one can come close to the quality of cooking that she is capable of whenever
she puts her mind to it, according to this hopelessly spoiled son of ours. He
can barely speak a word in Bengali, being born and brought up here in Canada, yet
every time he comes home for a visit it must never be anything but pure Bengali
food, twice a day, every day. Drives his mother crazy with his craving for
rich, thoroughly unhealthy, Bangladeshi food. Yet I don’t know if she would be
happy with anything else. This ‘pestering’ for food, this insatiable appetite
for food that is bound to create problems later in his life, is what she looks
forward to, is what she waits for. This is what keeps her going.
Today, her son is going to come home.
She has been working frantically for days
making every possible preparation to get ready for this day, completely
oblivious of the fact that she has just one hand that still responds to her
will, and only one leg she can still rely on. None of the two eyes can see
well, not even with the most powerful glasses. Today she is not willing to take
orders from her doctor, not even from her own Creator, I daresay. Today she
will not hold on to the railings, she will not reach for the walker. She will
let herself forget, just for this one special day, that a tiny little slip, a
minuscule loss of balance, can easily tumble her down to the floor in a heap of
broken bones that are as brittle as the cheapest china in the neighborhood
dollar store. Today she just can’t allow those delicate thoughts spoil the day.
Today her son is going to fly home.
Today she has been in and out of one room,
then another, then yet another, like a possessed person. But the room that got
the most attention, and the most thorough make-over is, of course, her son’s
room. She must have vacuumed it a thousand times---the poor fabric must be
screaming in distress. It’s a miracle that the drapes haven’t yet come out of
their strings. The fresh bed-cover has been laid on the bed as if meant for a
newly-wed couple. This is the room that our son used to sleep in before he left
home thirteen years before. This is the room where he used to stay awake all
night studying for exams or assignments. This is the room that he used to lock
up from inside, at times, sulking with his mother. This room belongs to Babu.
It is called ‘Babu’s Room’. The boy left long ago, but the name stuck. The
other bedroom on the opposite side is ‘Raja’s Room’----that belongs to our
second son. He, too, left home a long time ago, but the room is always ready
for him. Just in case he calls from the airport, saying: ’Ma, I’m here’. He
never did that, but you cannot tell that to a mother. Sometimes guests come for
short visits. We have to put them up in one or two of these rooms. She doesn’t like it. Keeps blaming me for
having too many overnight guests with all of their dirty habits, who are too
stingy with their money to stay in a hotel. Of course, I know the real reason.
She doesn’t want anyone else to share the rooms where she, and only she, can
still get the smell of her sons----a stranger’s
breath would inevitably destroy the purity of that immeasurable treasure
that only she can appreciate. As soon as the guests leave she sets me at work
cleaning up everything, top to bottom, as if to atone for the sin I committed
by having those filthy friends of mine occupy the rooms where she stores her
memories.
Usually she keeps the windows closed in her
sons’ rooms and the drapes down, for fear of dust. But today, the drapes and
windows are wide open in Babu’s Room. Let there be a little light, a little
air. Today’s sun is not the usual sun. Today the sun rose in the sky with a
single purpose---to greet her son. All this light, all this glorious blue
pasted across the sky---have just one mission----to say hello to her son.
There’s only one event in the entire universe today that has any significance.
Babu’s arrival.
“ Why are you getting so worked up”?----I
tease my wife, “this is not the first time he is coming home, nor will it be
the last.”
“How will you understand why I get worked
up”, she retorts, “ how possibly can you understand that? Are you a mother? “
Of course, I am not a mother. I have no
clear notion of what it means to be a mother. I used to think I have, when I
was younger. But now I know that’s just not true. I didn’t even try to
understand as long as my own mother was alive. When she passed away, it would
be too late too little even if I did try. Does any son ever understand his
mother? I heard that the daughters usually do. At least some, if not all. I
heard that as soon as they are married away and start having their own children
the daughters begin to become their mothers’ best friends. I wonder if my sons
will ever understand their mother. Will they ever know why she insists
on hanging on to their class notes from way back in middle schools? Or why on
earth she still has kept in her secret vault their childish drawings on scrap
papers in kindergartens. The sons are simply not born with that faculty.
My mother closed her eyes forever nineteen
years ago. Her face keeps flashing across my mind at times. A small sigh gashes
out. A little sadness descends. Mind wanders. Just for a moment. Then quickly,
in a flash, I snap back to reality, to my everyday life. She doesn’t cast a
large shadow like my father does, nor does she follow me wherever I go. She makes
a quick exit from the screen, just as quickly as she always did when she was
alive. To get out of everybody’s way was my mother’s way of supporting her
loved ones.
I have written a fair amount on my father.
When he died I felt abandoned, alone and orphaned. My father was much more than
a biological source of my existence----he was a powerful symbol of what a man
should strive for in life, a big idea, an ethereal concept. He was the
invisible force that kept raising the bar for me all the time. He used to lead
me from one unknown to another.
But my mother? No. I didn’t see my mother as
an inspiration, rather a soft cushion, a place of rest and sleep. We boys never
see our mothers the way we see our fathers. Mother is a statute, a figurine,
that has to be adored and revered , even worshipped at times. We write poems on
her, dedicate our sweetest songs, put her on our devotional altar. We seek our
heavenly bliss at her feet and kiss those feet with utmost love and reverence.
And yet, her “ opinions” are of no value to us. For opinions we go to the
father---for he is the one who knows everything. We seek counsel from
our teachers, our friends, sometimes even from our sons, but never from our
mothers. It’s only when we feel hungry, or lonely, or need blessing, we go to
our mother.
My mother was not highly educated. Practically
uneducated, one might say. Up to grade 6 in a rural school. She was not a bad
student, from what I heard. But then the inevitable happened----something
village girls are all too familiar with. Marriage! Plucked from the playground,
then off to the in-laws’ place. In a glittering wedding dress, complete with a
few pieces of jewelry. She crossed the threshold of womanhood before she could
cross the threshold of grade 6 to grade 7. Her class notes and books were
locked away forever in the family vault. She never had to use a pen or pencil
again but for occasional writing a letter to her husband. And yet, every one of
my eight siblings had our first introduction to the wonderful world of
alphabets and books from my mother. None of us went to the kindergarten----my
father couldn’t afford it. We learned the numbers from her, heard the stories
of the princes and princesses from her, and all the other fantastic tales that
all children love to hear and dream about.
After a hard day’s work sitting by the open fire of the wooden stove in
the primitive kitchen she would just wash off her sweaty smelly hands and face,
and have us sit beside her for our lessons. This is how my semi-educated
mother’s private kindergarten would be set in motion, day after day, weekdays
and weekends, week after week, year after year, until we were ready to go to
grade 3 in the high school. And we never failed in any grade ever in our
life---none of us. Yet we never mention in any of our transcripts where and how
we got our first education---let alone who our first teacher was. My mother’s
role as the most successful teacher in our lives remained completely ignored by
us all, as she herself was most of her life. We always mention our other
teachers, especially the ones who had inspired us to go somewhere, to be
somebody, but never remembered to mention my poor mother who lit the first
torch in our life with no or very limited resources. She was no more than a
mother, no more than a nighttime storyteller.
I know of one retired well-placed civil
servant who had a very humble beginning. His father was a day laborer, who died
when he was a 2-yr old baby. His mother was left all alone with nothing to
support a family of two daughters and a son. She had two choices: to camp by
the roadside with her children and beg for a few pennies, or to work as a housemaid
in some rich man’s family. She chose the latter. More honorable, she thought.
She didn’t want her children to grow up with a stigma of being a beggar’s kids.
Her main goal was to send her boy to school and to find suitable men for her
girls. She had a dream, a mission. She wanted her son to be somebody better
than her husband, somebody she could be proud of, she could brag about to her
folks and to everyone in the village. She wanted to make sure that nothing
stands in the way of her son’s healthy growth, with as much nourishment as she
could possibly provide, even if it meant her to forgo a meal or two for herself
and the poor little girls. She kept constant vigilance on the son’s progress at
school. At the beginning of every school year she would go around knocking on
doors for used books that he could use in his class. If necessary she would not
hesitate to dip into her meager savings or even borrow from her employer to buy
new books and other school supplies. Every year she would buy a new shirt and a
pair of shorts for the boy, and perhaps only once every two years for the
girls. Even though she never wore a pair of shoes in her entire life, nor did
the little girls, she made sure her son had at least a pair of rubber shoes
once a year. She couldn’t bear the thought of her son going to school
barefooted while everybody else would be walking in polished leather shoes.
What will people think? Thank God, the boy had brains. Always the top student
in his class----almost unbeatable. So he would get scholarships---two in fact.
One for his achievements, the other for being unable to afford the fees. So he
breezed through high school with flying colors. Then off he went to the college
and university. First divisions and first classes, nothing less in his entire
career. In fact it was at the university where he gave the most dazzling
display of his talents. His average marks at the honors and graduate levels
topped the impossible mark of 80%. The chancellor awarded him the gold medal. At
the graduation ceremony where the award was supposed to be handed to him by the
chancellor himself, his mother wanted to go with him, but he declined. His
excuse was that it was restricted to the graduates only, no one else, not even
the parents (which, of course, was not true). She was brokenhearted, but what
could she do? If no parent was allowed how could she be there? So she sat in
her employer’s house, and sat and sat. She couldn’t put her mind to work, until she could bear it
no longer. She begged leave of absence from work for a few hours. Then started
walking. Barefoot, of course. Walked and walked, for miles and miles until she
reached the site. She stood at the back of the crowd, unnoticed, out of place
in her bare feet and tattered sari, too embarrassed to be near so many
well-dressed men and women. Then the moment came. Her son’s name was announced
over the mike stating all his outstanding achievements. A heavenly beam of
light flashed upon her face. Pride, joy, and profound thankfulness to the
Almighty God poured on her face in a torrent of tears. She couldn’t control her
emotions any longer. She started to push through the crowd to position herself
near the stage just to get a glimpse of her son. A few students tried to push
her back. She got angry and started arguing with them. Do you know who I am? I
am the mother of Makbul Mia? Ha! Mother of Makbul Mia? Scoffed the amused
students. Obviously a deranged woman, concluded the thoughtless boys. How could
she pose to be the mother of the top student of the university if she were not
from the asylum? A small jostle followed, accompanied by loud protestations
from the hapless mother. The boys tried to gently but firmly help her out of
the place. The commotion became loud enough to attract curious looks from the
rest of the crowd, including Makbul who was just about ready to go on the stage
to take the medal from the chancellor. One look at the back set a chill through
his body. Oh my God! It’s my mother! About to be forced out of the gathering by
a group of students! At that moment what exactly was going through Makbul’s
mind no one would know for sure. I don’t even know what I would have
done in identical situation. These are some of the situations where human
nature is put to its ultimate test. I only know what Makbul actually did do. He
did not rush to the back of the crowd and push the boys aside to take his
mother’s arms and gently help her to the front row and proudly present her to
the dignitaries as the center of his world. No, he didn’t do any of those
things, let alone loudly proclaiming that it was this crazed, half-naked and
barefooted lady who was the one who deserved that medal more than he did.
Rather he rushed to the back to firmly take hold of the woman’s hands to whisk
her out of reach of all the boys, away from the crowd, and out of the protected
area. He never imagined his own mother would put him through such an
embarrassing situation.
Later that day his mother got a taste of her
son’s bitter tongue lashing. He gave her a stern warning, never to embarrass
him like that, not ever again, in front of so many people. It is true that boys
do not always obey their parents, but the mothers have no choice but to abide
by their commands. After that incident no one ever heard Makbul’s mother
having put her son to any such shame. After all, the son’s shame is also a
mother’s shame!
If a
mother were nothing but a mother then there wouldn’t be a problem. But the
trouble is that she is also a woman. We concede a mother’s right with bowed
heads, because that is what scriptures command us to do, but we are not so
anxious to concede any rights to the woman, because nothing specific is
mentioned in the holy books about women’s rights. So this so-called devotion to
the mother, one can’t help but wonder whether its source is the purity of love
from one’s heart or the purity of devotion for the scripture. If our elders
didn’t say that our paradise lay at the feet of our mothers, would we be so
anxious to kneel down to touch her feet for blessings? I have my doubts.
My two sons are both over 30 now. In course
of time they have become my closest friends, my real buddies. In my opinion
that’s how it should be. They talk to me openly and freely about their lives,
as I do to them about mine. Even the most personal things. Only their mother is
different. With her they are just her “little boys”, who need comfort from her,
her soothing touch, and have her cook their favorite dishes. But none of them
will ever think of discussing with her the issues of the world, the problems in
their own lives, exchanging views and opinions, or even what they want for
their own families. My boys were born and brought up in the west, so relatively
free from the influence of the scriptures. And yet they didn’t succeed in
scaling the mental barrier between the mother and the woman being one and the
same person.
( Translated by the author
from his Bengali piece “Ma” that appeared in 1999 in Toronto’s now-defunct
weekly magazine Deshe-Bideshe, then reprinted later in a couple of books)
June
2, 2010
Ottawa,
Canada.
Mizan Rahman, মীজান রহমান
4,381
