A Life Long Ago by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0000000000000
Published: 2021-06-12T15:36:03+00:00

Ma, My Mother

My mother felt bad for Madina bhabi, so she searched high and low for sarpagandha and gave its roots to Basir da’s mother. She hoped that this would help Modi to get well. But she also believed that whatever was fated would happen.

“Daya,” she said, “if fate wishes you to get well, you will; but if fate wills something bad for someone, misfortune will happen too. People will do what they have to but they can’t defy fate. It is fate that brought you to me. Once Hindustan and Pakistan were created, your parents left for Hindustan because both of them got jobs there. You were looked after by your eldest brother, Dulu. Soon, Dulu too got a job in Rupnarayanpur in Hindustan. You were just a few months old and Dulu was in a bind because he had to join work.”

“Pishima, please take this little one with you,” requested Dulu.

“I brought you along because Dulu asked me to,” said Ma. “You were fed on Buri’s milk and gradually grew from a baby into a litle girl.”

The cow was called Buri but Buri was also my mother’s pet name. I didn’t know what Ma, my foster mother, was actually called. I have always thought of her as my mother and she had carefully taught me the names of my birth mother, Suprabha and my father, Annada. Ma hadn’t told me her own name though.

“Tell me about yourself, Ma,” I asked. “What name did your parents choose for you? When were you born? When did you get married?”

So, I prised some facts out of my mother. My foster mother was called Snehalata and she was born in the cold Bengali month of Poush, that is, sometime in late December or early January. A month after she was born, her uncle, Mahendra (who was my father’s brother) was to get married. On the wedding day, baby Snehalata was taken away by a jackal. Fortunately, the family managed to rescue the child from the jaws of the jackal. Snehalata, the first child of the clan, was precious. She was Nandarani’s first granddaughter and was married at nine and widowed at fifteen. She was married to the eldest son of the Ghoshes from Khalta, a village near Sirajgunj in Pabna district. The boy was studying in a school far away, and lived there, in one of buildings in the school. The boy and his bride never had a chance to get to know each other. However, this child bride had to comply with the cruellest rituals of widowhood. The schoolboy died suddenly of cholera and Snehalata’s hair was shaved off and she was dressed in a stark white piece of cloth and pushed into a corner of the house. There was a photograph of her groom in the house, he stood along with others in the family, and my mother, Snehalata, could never pick him out from the others. Her groom’s father was already thinking of his third marriage. He hadn’t waited long to marry a second time after his first wife died.

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