I was walking down the street wearing a black hoodie made of fur with my hands inside the pocket. I don’t know why I walked the same path over and over again until I reached my destination; the bus stop. As usual, I stepped into the bus to take my seat when I saw a girl probably five or six pointing fingers at me. Her expressions were blank as her mouth was wide open. I don’t know what she was doing because all I felt it was my hairstyle. The multicolored hair consisting of blonde, purple and pink that caught her attention. During the entire journey, she stared back at me with her head rotating backwards towards my seat and then saying something to her mother in whispers and giggling as her hands covered her mouth.
I sat down laughing within myself wondering how my own individuality finally gain shaped with a hairstyle that too an uncommon one. Over the years, I don’t remember when was the last time I went out with my mother. To my surprise, I don’t remember the times when we spent well in each other’s company. Everything remained blank except the sadness that hovered over me. I don’t feel the same. The pain that was expected out of me doesn’t exist except the emptiness that sweep over me. I stared out at the window checking the droplets of rain falling on the grey road one by one as I reach home.
It has been nine years without a mother in my life. So many things have changed so far, father always tried to sympathize me instead of accepting me as myself. The relatives did the same. When my friends heard I don’t have a mother, they would say sorry as if it were a mistake but it was an innocent mistake. A sorry doesn’t matter. My ex-boyfriend gave me his mother’s number to fulfill the void inside me but a mother is a mother who is irreplaceable. It doesn’t matter who is she, what she did in the course of her lifetime and what kind of a relationship did we share together.
I lost her when I was in class eight. That day, I was called at the principle’s office in the middle of a class test. With a heart beating loudly, I went there only to be requested to go home early. I remember the voice of my father that day, he was serious unlike him as if words were forced out of his mouth. I asked the people around me but every one of them refused to answer me as I reached home only to hear the howling of people as if they were giving “ullu – dhoni” during Haldi ceremony of a wedding. It was weird with people staring at me as I pave my way through the crowd to find my mother laying still on the ground. Her mouth and nails were blue. I don’t remember what happened next as some lady hugged me tight. It was over within a few hours of going to school. My mother’s existence is wiped off the face of earth as she breathes her last during her afternoon siesta. Since then, life goes on. It didn’t stop. It didn’t bother to look after me the way I thought I deserved for the rest of my life.
Sometimes, I do miss the days when mother and I would make pithes (a special dumplings in Bengal made with rice flour and stuffed with coconut, jaggery or some lentil paste and then stemmed to have it). I regret not mastering the art of making them as she told me when I grow old, she will teach me. I regret not mastering the art of wearing a saree from a mother like others. Sometimes, the social media becomes unbearable with Mother’s Day messages and proud mother’s showing off their daughters’ achievements. My life would have been so different with the presence of a mother. People thought I won’t be a good person, a successful person just because I lacked the support of a mother but that didn’t stop me. The pain will be a part of me rather I should say the emptiness that couldn’t be replaced. People say time doesn’t heal anything but a wound does change into a scar. The pain vanishes but the reminder always exists.
Such expressive posts!