Alka Gurha
Alka Gurha
“Children are coming!” December is often that time of year when daughters and sons who are studying or working abroad make their way back home. It’s when families begin to feel a palpable tinge of excitement as they eagerly prepare a to-do list and stock up on groceries, before taking care of the shopping, cooking and cleaning. If you are a mother and your children are flying back, this is your Diwali.
First things first. The house help is told not to take an off while the kids are home. But they know when to push your buttons. ‘Didi, main aayegi but wo time par mere ghar me bhi shaadi hai.’ Thereafter, you decide to clean their rooms. Because, the bachhas want their room exactly how they left it. Even in their absence, they love to preserve their physical space. Needless to say, the planning of the menu keeps running in your head like a broken record. After all, there’s little point of the kids coming all the way back if they can’t be indulged with generous doses of tastebud nostalgia, be it in the form of carrot halwa, atta laddoos, mango pickle or crispy bhindi. Indeed, of all the seductions of a homecoming, maa ke haath ka khana remains the most enticing.
As it happens, excess food is cooked and stocked. But in a mom’s private cinema, images of the growing-up years are so vivid that she forgets children are no more teens with voracious appetites. Moreover, when a mother embarks on a sentimental journey, reality becomes the first casualty. ‘Pata nahin wahan khane ko milta bhi hai ki nahi!’ As if children are returning from a famine-afflicted country and not the UK or US!
Once ensconced in their room, the children open cupboards and rummage through clothes, knick-knacks and school memorabilia, rekindling past memories. They feel reassured by the sight of an old class-10 t-shirt tucked safely away in a drawer, even though it refuses to fit. ‘Mom, where is my black-and-white top?’ You either made a duster of it or gave it to the maid, but you act innocent. ‘Must be there, look properly.’
As a mother, you no longer think of admonishing your kids for eating in the middle of the night. In fact, the fuzzy, irrational and emotional side of you chooses to keep some chips and nuts on the bedside, just in case they feel like having a midnight snack. ‘One night of snacking is not that bad, is it?’ you convince yourself. Precious days pass you by as you momentarily forget the hitches and hiccups that a change in weather and the Delhi pollution invariably bring. Delhi being Delhi, the city ‘blesses’ in some way, whether it’s the Delhi belly or a sneeze-fest. Sure enough, no visit is complete without the children popping an Allegra or taking a spoonful of Digene.
And once the initial hype and hoopla is over, it’s time for a health check-up. A visit to the dentist for precautionary cleaning, to the ENT for that pestering sinus, or to the ophthalmologist for a new pair of spectacles – these are priorities that must be met. Then throw into the mix a long list of friends to catch up with, friends of every denomination, among them schoolmates, fellow graduates and work colleagues. Because, hell hath no fury like a friend unmet. So, it’s lunch with buddies from school, dinner with the neighbours, and (very reluctantly) tea with relatives.
Still, as with a beautiful novel you desperately don’t want to end, only when you are on the last page does it hit you that it’s all over. The mom in you wants to pack sweets, pickles, peeled fruits, halwa, but…‘No need Mom, we get everything there.’
Whether it’s the first day of school or college, or the flight to another land, bidding adieu is a torment any mother and father can relate to. Parental love is not the beatific love of angels. It’s anxious love, a tightrope walk between trying to stop the kids from leaving the nest and empowering them to take wing. It’s a battle between the heart and mind. And yet, you smile bravely. Until next time.
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