I finally found her, after searching for a decade plus. I had just one goal; now accomplished, I was headed back home to Bombay. As the flight took off, the sunset triggered events of the past before my decades long search.
Where it began…
I ran away that fateful day, decades ago. I now have a patchy recollection of the exact incident. I was in my 12th grade, had an argument with the physical instruction teacher, and when he slapped me, I slapped him back, so hard, he fell. I watched as he got up. Dusted himself and threatened, you are out of this school, you will be behind bars… And walked off. I had been accused of stealing from another student. I had cheated but not stolen anything. This was a exchange deal between kids gone bad. But I was now super worried that this was out of control.
I dreaded the scene at home. My father was a strict disciplinarian a poor policeman. And my mother, a soft, quiet lady, would be very scared. That’s when I decided to run away.
I quickly rushed home, put some of my stuff in a handbag. Then thought, let me pick up some money as well. I pulled out my mom’s old metal suitcase, under the bed. I knew where she kept her tiny collection of jewelry. When I opened the trunk, I was surprised to find a little amount of cash as well. I pocketed the cash, there was an old chain, and some other broken pieces of jewelry. I pocketed all of them and left.
I ran away to Hyderabad first, after a year, migrated to Bombay (it was not yet called Mumbai). When I needed some cash, I took the package of jewelry to a jeweler. He tested the quality of the chain, the different pieces, sorted them out and offered me some cash. Then handing back a piece of jewelry, he said, “that is a mangalsutra, take it back, we don’t melt it”. I asked him why, he asked is the lady alive, I said, “yes”. What about her husband, I replied, “yes”. “Then it should go back to her,” he said. I put it in my pocket thinking someday, I am going to hand it back to my mother (and also repay her some day for all her valuables I had taken, I thought).
15–20 years must have rolled by. I had got some amount of success, tagging along with a real estate guy in Bombay, eventually starting my own PG accommodation. Then expanded it to about more such places in south-Bombay. Along the way, I had met and married a local girl, and had a child in a couple of years. So, successful by many standards.
Get Niranjan Maka’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Years later, watching the evolving attachment between mom and kid, I started thinking of my mom and the past began to haunt me.
Taking some time off, I went back to Bangalore. Now it was called Bengaluru. Went to the area where we had our home. I was stunned. Everything had vanished; area where we used to live, they were now all huge apartments complexes, like in Mumbai. I went around other streets, looking for the familiar “dhobi” guy, the tiny school nearby and the tiny grocery shops. All of them were gone. New unrecognizable buildings — different from my old, yellow, two-floor constructions of my childhood. After spending two weeks searching, I returned to Bombay.
Another couple of years passed, once, when spring cleaning, my wife found that old piece of trinket, and asked, whose mangalsutra it was? My memories came flooding back. Again, I decided to head back to Bengaluru, find my mother and hand her back her mangalasutra and compensate her for what I had stolen.
This time, I thought let me camp a couple of months, search with relatives, search for my younger sister too. And a dark thought also crossed my mind, what if they were not alive anymore?
After close to a couple of months of futile search, the dark thought returned — what if they were no more? And I set about searching the community cemeteries… It was a weird expedition. Walking from grave to grave trying to read the engraving on the stone tomb structures.
I had almost given up, when one afternoon, with a few days left to return, I found something with a name that resembled my mother’s on a tombstone in Hosur cemetery! I used my bottled water to wipe the name a little bit and discovered the first and last name matched my mom’s! The birth year approximately matched as well. But I was deeply shocked when I saw the year of expiry — it was just within about seven years of my running away from home. She must have been in her early 40s, I thought, when she had passed away. I was very sad, because I could guess what had led to her possible early departure. And I couldn’t imagine her anguish of separation from me, she loved me so much.
I prayed, kneeled and prostrated, offered my long pending apologies and tearfully, walked away with heavy steps. Then, I suddenly remembered my search mission. I dived into my pockets, fished out her old mangled mangalsutra, went back to her grave, dug up a tiny hole on her grave and buried it near her neck.
My search had ended.
(search — story & pic: nmaka. no ai.)
