Her face is wrinkled, her back bent, her hands tremble, and her steps falter. Time, my dear, time, ruthless and indifferent, strips away the beauty of the people we highly adore and cherish the most. There is no greater enemy than time. It robs us of those who love us beyond measure. It plays its part so surreptitiously and cunningly but Its cruelty becomes most visible when our mothers—once radiant, energetic, young and full of life—grow old before our eyes, while we remain powerless to halt its assault on their youth. I was told by my siblings, town people and it is evident now from the shrewd nature of my mother that my mother was once strikingly beautiful, but as her youngest child, I never witnessed her prime myself as i was born late and somehow unwantedly because my mother wanted to abort me but she could not succeed in it even after taking medicines as she narrates. By the time I was born, she had already endured the burden of raising six children. Moreover , My studies kept me away for years, and only recently have I lived permanently with her. Now, each glance at her face fills me with sorrow. It is not anger at her or myself, but at time itself—the deceiver that steals away the youth of our mothers. Ages them, weakens them, and cripples their mobility. God , I often reflect, placed heaven beneath a mother’s feet, yet time desecrates this heaven first. I often wonder: is paradise built from the ashes of mothers when they die? Is it their sacrifice that sustains the celestial spheres? Why then must they age, lose their beauty, and surrender their strength? If my direct communion , one day , takes place between me and God, I will dare to ask him why mothers lose their beauty and youth that is an unsettling question that will definitely disturb God. Like T.S. Eliot dares to disturb the universe? by asking unsettling questions of old age, lethargy, aimlessness, anxiety and restlessness. My mother suffers from arthritis, a disease that has consumed her life. Ten tablets a day weaken her further. Though she rarely ventures out, habit keeps her from idleness. She still tends my sorry her kitchen garden—watering, weeding, sowing, cutting—her hands are busy even as her body falters. Watching her, my eyes fill with sighs, tears and cries . I do not want her to age further. I do not want her to suffer. I do not want her to die. She has crossed seventy, while I am in my thirties, yet I wish for her to live a few decades more. I want her to live long, but not grow older. That torment is unbearable. Old age is loathsome. It is the worst part of life as we are besieged by so many diseases. But we must acknowledge as William Shakespeare also reminds us that nothing escapes time—not brass, stone, earth, nor the boundless sea. It seizes all. I will say ok as an educated man and I may accept this bitter truth, but when it comes to one’s mother, acceptance turns into rage. It is frightening to believe this truth and let it dance shamelessly in front of our eyes. We curse time day and night although we should not as it is sacred and previous but one loses all patience because of love and attachment to our mothers. But one may ask, Is there a way out to escape age or to defeat it? To traverse immortality and overcome evanescence? No. Yet one can resist evanescence by living magnificently and judiciously leaving behind a legacy in history, memory, books, and thought. A book keeps us alive and we are read, discussed and written about. I always believed that writing checkmates time and eternalises us. Shakespeare captured it perfectly: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”Mothers give birth to heroes and heroines, writers, speakers and through them, their legacy endures. In this way, mothers never truly die—they live on in the greatness of their children. Still, my youth feels disturbed. Looking at my mother, I see my own future: the wrinkles, the bent back, the trembling hands, the staggering legs. Is it the fate of all of us, old age, wrinkled face and weakened body. I am frightened of old age. I hate it. I often tell my students that I want to die before old age and diseases take me in. I am obsessed with Juan Elia who expressed this anguish of time beautifully: “Kitne dilkash ho tum, kitna diljoo ho mai,
kya sitam hai ki hum log mar jayen gay.”
(“How enchanting you are, how captivating I am—what cruelty it is that we must die.”)
The title of this article, My Mother at Sixty-Seven, may surprise you but It is inspired by Kamala Das’s poem My Mother at Sixty-Six. I added a year, not merely to mark my mother’s age that is nearing eighty, but to underscore the deeper torment I feel—greater even than what Kamala Das expressed.
The writer is a teacher and a columnist and can be reached at azaadbhat28@gmail.com.
