When I was a kid, my mother used to tell me a story. It was about a boy who dips his hand in a jar full of candies. He takes out one, then another and suddenly he wants more. He tries to get a fistful of candies only to realise that his hand is now stuck in the jar; all because he wanted more. ‘More’, my mother told me was a dangerous thing to want, to crave. But that didn’t stop me from wanting more—more of the story, more ice-cream, more marks in exams, more love. And now, as I lay back in my deathbed, all I want is more time; more days and some more nights.
I had never thought that I’d die young. I’m barely 30 (I’m 22, if you must know) and I am dying!
“You have six months left now,” my doctor told me one fine day. It’s hard to believe that until before that day, everything had been normal; my life had been a long one. And now, I’ll never get to see myself turning 50 and complaining about my grey hair and fussing about my favourite daisy pot which my grandchildren would crash into pieces. But these were not the things that got me thinking after my death announcement was made. I worried about my mother. What was I going to tell her? How on earth could a daughter speak words of unimaginable brutality and bitterness to her mother?
“I’m going to die, mum.” I have always hated those epic teary-eyed dramas with their impossibly lengthy dialogues.
“Me too,” my mother had said without so much as a look into my eyes. “With all this work to do, I might as well die right now.” The way she had said it, she might as well have been talking about the weather.
“I’m dying, mummy,” I said again with a choked voice. I prayed to God that she would never hear that, but she did. Words, they say, can break your heart. I know those words broke my mother’s heart, because they had broken mine.
I still remember that instant, the vacant look of my mother’s eyes simmering with tears and questions. We cried all day and all night that day, and the next, and next. Drama… How I have always hated it, never realising that one day my life would be it—a teary-eyed drama.
* * *
“Wake up. I need to show you something.” After all the tears our eyes could hold had been shed, my mother came to my room one early morning and woke me.
“Now hurry, this can’t wait.” My mother has always been hyperactive in certain situations—both good and bad—for God knows some reason. In an instant, we were on our rooftop terrace. Only a few days ago, there had been flowers of all kinds and colours. Now, all I could see were bare stems.
“You mean this can’t wait, mum?” I said gesturing toward those flower-pots which held only soil, but no life. “The dying stems and those already dead roots?”
“Look carefully,” my mother said with a smile that made me want to smile in return.
Mothers, I sighed. And their dramas and persistence.
So I looked from one flower-pot to another, reminiscing those early mornings when I had come to the terrace with my mother to watch the early buds bloom and the first dew drops disappear, slowly. Those days seemed like they’d been in another age and time. Past; I didn’t want to get stuck in past, nor did I want to look beyond it because I had no future. Today was all I had. But for how long; for how long, I wanted to shout.
“Look carefully.” My mother’s voice hung in the air again.
I sighed again. I had been doing a lot of sighing lately. I still do.
“I wish I’d look around and find a miracle,” I said.
“You will,” my mother said with a voice so firm that it made me want to believe that I would find a miracle.
“You know miracles don’t exist, not in our lives anyway.” I was turning into more of a cynic with every passing day. I didn’t blame myself.
My mother didn’t say a word, which was unusual. So I looked at her side. She was wearing her infectious smile that never faltered. And for the first time in the few days that felt like an eternity, I noticed grey hair by the sides of her temple and the crow’s feet around her eyes. She is getting old, I thought, something I will never have a chance at. People always fuss about old age. No one likes getting old. But if God had appeared right at that moment and asked me to make a wish, I would have asked to get old, to die old. But of course, God was a face never to be seen, just like my future.
“Stop thinking,” my mother’s voice brought me back to the present, my endearing present which was getting lesser with every passing moment. “We don’t want to stand here all day long, do we? There are so much works to be done.”
The last few days, my mother had all but forgotten about her work. And now she had gotten back to her old-self. Maybe she’s decided to move on, I thought. And why shouldn’t she? The world wouldn’t stop turning around once I was gone. Then why would it stop when I was still breathing and standing on my terrace on my own feet. I might as well look and find whatever it is my mother wants me to find and get this whole ‘looking’ business over with, I mused.
So I looked again, carefully this time, at every flower-pot. And just when I thought of giving up (giving up seemed like a better option those days), I saw it. It was small, just the size of my thumb, sprouting out of nowhere. But there it was, standing in all its glory. A new life… that was the term my mother and I used for every little plant and seedling. And even before I’d gotten a close look of that new life, I knew all about its family and genus and species.
“Daisy,” I whispered.
“Your favourite.” I hadn’t realised that my mother was standing beside me. “It’s the wrong time of the year for it to bloom,” she said.
“I know.” I remembered how I had always wanted daisy on my roof-top, how consistently I had waited for the right season to plant the plantlet, how willingly I had taken care of it, and how persistently I had failed year after year until one day I finally decided to stop trying.
“Daisy,” I said it again, aloud.
The stem was delicate, with only one leaf. But it would bloom, I knew. I didn’t know how just as I didn’t know how it had come to life. Magic, maybe. Or a miracle, my wishful thinking, a hope, a dream or a hundred other things I had lost my faith in. I didn’t want to ask what and how and why. I didn’t need any more answers. In that one instant, in that one new life, I found what I thought I had lost forever—life, hope, dream and faith.
“It’s not much, is it?” My mother gently touched the leaf.
“It’s far too less, mum,” I replied with a gleam in my eyes that reflected the dew drop lying on that tiny leaf. “But less is more.” And then I smiled. A tiny smile like a flutter in the wind, a crackle in the fire, a ray of light in the distant horizon.
•••
Six months, that was my timeline. It’s been a year now. And no, I’m not dead. I’m still breathing, my mother still fusses about her work and the world still keeps turning around.
I am lying in my bed (I call it my deathbed, to my mother’s utter dismay). There is a flower vase next to my deathbed with a daisy in it. I like watching the petals wither slowly until my mother replaces the flower with another. I like the continuity of it, the chain of one flower and another, the breaking down of an end. ‘End’, I am still afraid of it. That’s why I pray for more time—more days and some more nights.
I sometimes think of that story my mother told me a long time ago. I don’t know whatever happened to that kid who got his hand stuck in that jar. Maybe he learnt to settle with less and freed his hand. And I think I might as well live with whatever ‘less’ life throws at me. A bend around the corner, a daisy at a wrong time in a wrong place, magic the size of a grain, another day and one more night!
- Barsha Chitrakar
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