मम (Mama)

A six-year-old stood next to a grazing white cow, quietly observing the chomping enthusiasm with which it carried on feeding. This unencumbered enthusiasm was the first thing that brought her close to the cow Gauri, for her mother had often admonished her similar vehemence for eating. The girl wasn't the one to disregard the fascinating stories her mother had told about the mother-cow. Nevertheless, it was the chomping that first disarmed the menacing horns of the animal.

The cow is our mother was what her mother used to say while patting Gauri on the back, consequently drawing her hand to also repeat the act. The supple white fur of Gauri was the softest thing the girl had ever touched. She had never heard of dolls, a village was no place for indulgence. But with time, stroking Gauri's fur turned into her favourite pastime, and remained so until her mother's untimely demise.

The girl returned home and tethered Gauri to the hovel post. After stroking the cow's infirm waddle for a minute, filled with random reflections of her mother's ghoongat laced giggle, she headed in towards the kitchen with an enthusiasm seldom reserved for the other chores. The kitchen floor, same as the rest of the house, was painted with cow dung; which in the recent past had been her mother's duty, but now remained steadfastly hers. The kitchen was where her mother spent most of her time. And thus, rather aptly, it was to be the place where she died.

The girl didn't understand life and death well. Who ever does? Though, she understood enough to know that this sweltering cauldron of heat was where she wanted to be. For this kitchen not only reminded but was also a mother to her. It was the only place still redolent of her mother's smell. The ballooning chapatis and the simmering Dal painting a picture only the most fortunate ever get to remember, much less breathe in its salty, sweat fused odour. She wasn't articulate enough to categorise this as love; but this was it, her favourite pastime. Remembering the warm giving silhouette that was her mother. The softness of cow's fur had slowly been overtaken by the pliancy of dough without even her knowing about it.

Soon the grandmother was out serving food to the father while the girl was tending to the last browning chapati on the brick stove.

Her father was still washing down the last morsel of food with the milk when interrupted by the coughing grandmother, "It is drying . . . And the girl still is not old enough."

"Hmm."

"The new mother should help with the other chores too . . . You will always need a son to till the fields," said the mother as she sat down to eat.

"Hmm."

"Listen to me. You cannot be a widower all your life, son . . . ." The old woman exclaimed with a shaky breath while the little girl now stood outside washing her allergic bumps with the cow urine . . . .

'33 crore gods live inside a cow,' her mother used to say before washing her with the Gauri's urine to cure those seasonal allergic bumps away. And cured she would be, in a matter of days. However now, sans mother, the disinterested father would rather instruct her to drink cow's urine. The little child that she was, she much preferred cow's acerbic urine on her skin than the mouth, thus washing it all alone at night.

In a few days' time, the grandmother furnished her with the news she had only ever dreamt of hearing. Her mother's return. And it wasn't just her mother's return, but her mother's return with a newer, healthier body sans any signs of that wretched, soul curdling cough.

The girl that night provided Gauri with an extra pile of hay, thanking her, worshipping her, the only way she understood, the only way she could . . . .

In a year, the dung painted yellow-brown hut was glimmering with the golden light of mud lamps. Although the girl had already fallen asleep on her wicker charpoy, after waiting all day for her new mother's return.

Next morning, the girl woke up to the hubbub of relatives around her new mother. The whole day she stared expectantly at this new mother. Waiting for a chance to speak, but the moment simply wouldn't let owing to all the customary practices the occasion demanded.

Next few days, she gradually realized that it wasn't her real mother who had somehow managed to return with a new face, but a new person who was wholly unbeknownst to her existence. And the best she could offer in return to all her solemn questions was an unrealized chuckle. Soon the kitchen, and with that, the memory of her mother was taken away as the new mother took a hold of her responsibilities. Whenever the girl dared pester her grandmother with the questions regarding the new mother, she would reply with a furrow less face, "She is your real mother. She just cannot remember. It's her new life too, you know. Keep reminding her, and she will in time."

The girl retrieved all her old clothes and habits to remind the new mother of her old self, but the mother was too far along in this new incarnation to remember her little self. Fortunately for her, the allergy returned in just the nick of time, bringing a big smile to her guileless face.

The girl hid her bumps from everyone, keeping them all just for her mother; to whom she would display those bumps as though the signs of her unremitting love. But the new mother could not even notice the oddity present in her hands let alone remember the cure for them. She waited long, longer than her body would let by covering herself with the full-sleeved dresses of winter: to obscure it from the other family members' sight.

She was still thinking of new ways for reminding the new mother of her old self when one day while praying to Gauri, she noticed a stranger enter the hovel.

He was there with a new Gauri or at least that was what her father told, repeatedly, until the miracle cure, the mother of gods was replaced just like her mother.

The girl did not understand, for this was not only hers but everyone's mother. How could one ever replace everyone's mother, much less the mother of all gods? The girl rushed inside the house to urge the grandmother to put an end to this ungodly proceeding, for who could ever understand it better than the grandmother.

Grandmother didn't say anything until she was forced into a corner with the sight of her flailing bump riddled hand, "Cow is a mother, my child," she averred with all but furrows gleaming through her desiccated face. "A mother must give until she cannot anymore. For, giving is the only role deemed for a mother, my child. If a mother can't give, then she is no mother. You'll learn one day, my child. Everyone does."

"But she answered my prayer. Gauri has returned my mother." The girl begged again to the stone that was to be the grandmother's face, henceforth. Since all her lively tricks and offerings were over now, and the only thing left to be given was the nothingness of reality.

The girl would often, nostalgically, wash her bump filled arm with the new Gauri's urine. But the allergy would remain the same as though the rubber of skin on her hand, as though the memory of her new mother, as though an inimitable reminder that she must be a mother someday. And there is no miracle cure, no miracle return.