change is the order of the day...be it with tangibles or intangibles..

Change of room again! That was my reaction when I got shifted from the cubicles we sat in on the fourth to the single cabin down in the basement, the same basement that used to be our haunt earlier when I had just joined ITM. Nishi and I shared a cabin in those days and were so reluctant to go up to the cubicles. We concocted all the possible reasons to come back to "our' basement as we termed it. It fell on the deaf ears of the management. Appraisals done, the management then saw reason to shift me back to the basement. By this time I had got throughly adjusted to the cubicles and didnt want to come down. But we inferior mortals in a system can very rarely have our say in management matters. So back I was to a cabin in the basement. I would make a cursory visit to the fourth floor to meet up my old room mates. vain as I may sound as I write this, but its true, the place had lost its charm, it has become so academic in its atmosphere, everyone busy at their work stations, making notes reading journals, creating PPT's. My jokes and laughtter would liven them up everytime I stepped in there."Mam please come in more often, we need to laugh sometimes!", they would say. The Dean of the college must have had a purpose in sending me into solitary confinement in the basement! Archana my dear colleague would ask between laughs as to how I manage to sit by myself for one whole day all by myself in my cabin below. She knows me for a little over 6 months but she has already made a good analysis of me. She knows I love people and interpersonal skills is my main forte. Being with people makes me come alive.
I have lost a lot of people in the journey through life. Some have died leaving me all lonesome, but there are others who have just distanced themselves for reasons best known to them. I create a bond of my own with people who come into my life and stuggle hard to keep each relationship alive, for each is special in its own way. When people move away from my life, I try my level best to bring them back to where they belonged, my heart. since my childhood, gaining the love of my friends and relatives has always been my prime motive. I take it as a rejection when friends move ahead in life and dont have the time or inclination for me. But there is precious little I could do to alter their intent. Adn so I go on with life, missing the people who have left me behind, nevertheless going ahead...for that is life...
I am moving out of the basement cabin too, today is my last day here...I have been assigned a bigger cabin with more facilities. My dear room, I am not leaving you out of choice, but out of compulsion...

Ma dated 23 jan 2009

Ma is old now, the wrinkles on her cheeks stand testimony to the years gone by...the stuggles that she has faced...she was definitely not God,s chosen one. She grew up motherless, her mother having died when she was an infant...she grew up beautiful...proud..upright, very blunt at all times. She was very talkative and had an infectious smile. She married baba when she was 20, baba, not so handsome as she describes him in his young days,I found him to be dashing, he grew handsome with age, like old wine, I have taken after him, hahhahaa...
Ma spent many a years without baba, work took him away and she had us brats to look after, didi, Gopal and I. Gopal was her favourite, she would breathe Gopal, thought him to be an incarnation of the God she prayed to, she was blind to his faults. When baba died she came to live with us in Mumbai, our roots with chennai dried up with baba's demise.
And then her favourite, Gopal too died. She is inconsolable to this day. She is lonely. We all have our life to live, our struggles, our toils,our tears and joys...and we in the process become so selfish that we fail to see her sentiments at times. She is like a child today, needs all the care and attention. her frail frame is bent with age but her indefatigable spirit undenied.

Postscript- I had composed this much before her death way back in the begining of the year, left it just as it is without any editing, this is the ma my companion as I saw her, she dependant on me for everything and me dependant on her for her sheer presence in my life that feels os incomplete without her now!