Mother, I remember: Sahil parmar

It is like putting together the fragments of a portrait years after it is broken. In these twenty eight years of my life I see Ma in flash and blood before me. But I can visualize her only as a series of glimpses, recollections and broken images from the past, it is her multifaceted personality that makes it impossible for me to visualize her as a whole.

The picture of Ma nursing me is imprinted indelibly in my memory. Today when misfortune stalks me , when defeat stares me in face, when I withdraw to my room in the dead of night, when the whole world is immersed in forgetful sleep, amidst the turmoil of disturbing thoughts, the vision comes tiptoeing into my mind. It soothes my ruffled nerves. I close my eyes and travel back in time to become a babe in Ma’s arms again. I feel revitalized to face the world again.

I had two elder brothers who died in early infancy. Ma did not have a child for several years afterwards. She took divers vows and made numerous offerings to be ‘blessed’ with a child again. She went on pilgrimages which scraped the bottom of the family’s resources. The holy waters of the Narmada and the Banganga were collected and brought home. Ma ate neither rice nor cocoanuts for six years. During this period, as part of her penance, she took her food in the most awkward manner imaginable, her arms and legs stretched and twisted like a contortionist’s. My grandmother( bapa’s mother0 who had died twenty two years before was popularly held to have acquired divinity after her death. Her ghost was invoked with the necessary rituals and shut up in an earthen pot! Finally ma’s devotion and excruciating penances paid off. I was born.

I remember Ma not so gaunt and shriveled. ”Your mother was so beautiful that when we went out hand in hand after marriage, she looked like a proper vaniyan.” Bapa told me once. ” Nobody could even have imagined that we were untouchables.” But Ma had not changed much by then.( I was ten years old). She was still fair and good looking, with a middling figure which made her neither lean nor obese.

Life with bapa was often a crown of thorns for Ma.Bapa was short tempered and intolerant. He was a walking encyclopedia of four letter words. Hardly a couple of days passed without him kicking up a terrible row. It was his asthma and the travails of making both ends meet that made him fly into the frightful temper of his. Besides, he nursed an inferiority complex, having become old and wrinkled while Ma still looked young.”I don’t care if you earn a lakh rupee. It’s dirt to me!” , he would shout at her at the top of his voice ( he was more often out of work than Ma), this would be followed by a filthy abuse and an explicit order to get out of his house. I was not on talking terms with bapa most of the time. When we turned his  ire on me , Ma would come in between to defend me. But that would send him into an even worse fit of rage and Ma would get another earful for spoiling me with her ‘petting’.  Quite frequently the whole neighbourhood would collect to watch bapa vent his fury. Not that Ma too didn’t sometimes give bapa a piece of her mind. But tired of bickering endlessly, she would mostly control herself and wait patiently for bapa to cool down.

Even when he thrashed her mercilessly ( this happened frequently) she bore it quietly without retaliating. Much later in life, I realized that I was witnessing something which occurred routinely in innumerable households: how adversity turns a man, who in the normal course of things may be a loving husband and a doting father, into a fiendish monster, and how a wife swallows every insult thrown at her by her husband and lets the last remnant of her self- respect be trodden upon by him to prevent the family from breaking up. One day bapa, in one of his bouts of anger, hacked at Ma with an axe. But fearing that I might become incensed at bapa and come to blows with him over it, she concealed the incident from me. When I asked her about the scar on the palm of her hand, she hurriedly explained it away. The axe had slipped, she said, when she was splitting logs of firewood in the yard.

Setting aside conventional priggishness for a moment let me relate a childhood experience of mine, the memory of which still troubles me. Our whole family   bapa, ma and we children used to sleep in the only bedroom we had. Once, in the middle of a cold winter night, I suddenly woke up. The room was in pitch darkness. I heard bapa whispering to ma: ”You are still young. These days even old women want it. I can’t control myself any longer.” ”No,no…” Ma protested. I pulled the quilt over my head and tried to go back to sleep. From the creaking of cot I could make out that bapa was having intercourse with ma, or rather as I learned later, he was raping her. Assuming that I have, for the most part, inherited my intense sexuality from bapa, and considering the advice he used to give me after my marriage to take it easy with sex, I can say that such rape was a routine affair in their married life. It was the most common type of sexual exploitation. Talking of sexual exploitation, I must confess that today I see the same subdued, resigned expression of Ma’s transplanted on my wife’s face. Perhaps nothing has changed in a generation.

Contrary to the impression one might gather from an account of the hardships she suffered, Ma’s life was not without its moments of joy, even gay abandon. Bapa has told me, in his few moments of reverie, of the great times he had with Ma at the vanravan mela and the kathyak mela (karthik purnima of Sidhpur).I had this confirmed from Ma. I have seen with my own eyes, Ma’s coulourful and exuberant turn out for the mela’s of Asarava and trankhuniya bagicha (near hajipura garden). On wedding nights she would brak into sprightly dances, sometimes with a pot or a plate balanced on her head. Occasionally throwing off modesty and discretion to winds, she would swig liquor from a cup in full view of the elders of the family.ma had a wonderfully sweet voice. Come Navratri, and she would leap into the fray, possessed by the spirit of festivity. 

Chandaliyo ugyo re sakhi rara chokman

(It is the night of sharad poonam

In the month of Aso

Look, my bosom friend,

The moon has risen in my yard).

Ma pava te gadhthi utarya ma kali re

Vasavya chmpaner pavagadh vali re.

(Ma Kali, come down from pavagadh,

Went to live in champaner, o Ma of pavagadh).

In those days, when there were no blaring loud speakers or mercury lamps which turned night into day ,

Ma sang and danced the garbo with other women of the neighbourhood  on a patch of leveled ground spread with fine sand. I have stood gazing at them for hours, enchanted by their captivating melodies and rhythms. Ma had a large repertoire of songs for all occasions. On the night of janmastami , she would start with,

Naganiyono rafado kesariya lal

Chhodo amara naagne  rom ne kahejo kesariya laal.

(Clad in saffron is the lair of the snake.

Tell ram to let her go.)

The next would be,

Ronin devakino kana j mara meman

(queen devki’s Krishna , my guest for the day.)

To be followed by,

Pittal lota jale bharya

Ne datan doles kune?

Datan dolshe maro kan

Aaj mara meman.

( fill the brass tumbler with water,

Who shall brush his teeth with  the datan

For he is my guest today!)

What I saw in Ma was an amazing synchronization of folk music and dance.

The vinchhudo (scorpion) dance was one of the Ma’s favourite dances:

Ararare maadi

Chhanan vinvaa jaiti ma vinchhudo

Humbe humbe vinchhoodo.

Kaidyo ma vinchhudo, humbo, humbo vinchhudo,

(Ma, I went to collect  dung

Strung I was by vinchhudo, Ma.)

In her undulating voice, in her graceful movements I saw an intense yearning and a strange pining. Ma’s vinchhudo dance unskilled for the most part , but natural and organic will remain fresh in my memory as long as I live.

For weddings she rendered ‘ tavan tavyaa chhe/ tal vadakde kadkadyan re( hot is the vessel/ sizzle goes the oil) or ‘ peethi peethi cholo re peethi rani( put on the peethi, my girl). When she danced peethi with her nandoya. Such genteel and refined songs like  Madijaya mandapade aay/ hun ye santoshan bendi     ( to the mandap came madijaya/ and my joy knew no bounds, sister) came naturally to her. But she  could throw all gentility and refinement to the winds when she was in the mood for it. She knew quite a few phatanas.

Tari beni ne maro viro kyan gayan?

E to dungar par chadh gayaan.

Vayara vashe ne dungara dolshe

(where did your sister and my brother go?

I think they went up the hillock there.

Wait till the wind blows and the hillocks rock)

E to padi ghoda heth,  ene maina raya pet

Maro bhallo ghodo re

Kagalno ghodo ghas khava jay maro

Bhallo ghodo re.

(it got laid by the horse.

Got a swollen belly for its pains.

O what a cute horse!

A paper horse goes to graze,

O what a smart horse!!)

Chon jaiti bichari bapdi?

Bar baponi, ter dhaniyon ni?

Chapti chokha ye maisha

(where did the poor , little wrench go?

No more than a handful of rice shall she get

From a dozen fathers and thirteen husbands).

Like the waves of the sea, ma’s voice rose and fell. But it would take on a plaintive, subdued tone when she sang marasiyas for a dead relative or neighbor:

Mochida layo mojdi re

Te to pehri na joni

Hy, manva, haye, haye.

(the cobbler brings a pair of mojdi

But they wont be worn,

No more , alas, no more!)

Leeli leeli lembadani dal

Margo bolyo majam ratno.

(a twig snaps on the green neem,

A cock crows in the dead of the night.)

I have inherited from Ma, the rustic rhythms and melodies which sometimes appear in my poems. It is in this songs that I can say that Ma has nurtured my fidgeting creativity.

Notes:

Vaniyan :	A woman of the vaniya (baniya) caste
Peethi :	A yellow paste smeared on the bride and bridegroom ,”to smear the peethi” I n popular parlance means to  get married.
Nandoyi:	The husband of one’s husband’s sister
Phatana:	A rustic , ribald song subg during weddings
Maraseeya:	An elegy Sahil Parmar Sahil Parmar, born 1 October 1958, is a Government employee. His collections of poetry are Vyatha Pachisi (1984), Ek rakabi futi (1991), and Mathaman (2006). His poetry is burning lava of rebellion against injustice. He also has wonderful crafts-manship in love poems.His address: Plot 1411/2, Sector 2B, Gandhinagar, Gujarat. And his Tel.: 93282 42528.