Letting Go of Hurt, Restorying our Lives
A doorbell rings. On one side of the door, a 12-year-old injured child, still in shock. On the other side, her unsuspecting mother.
They sent me home after first aid. I had a chipped front tooth and a deep gash on the inside of my upper lip where my teeth had dug into the skin. For days I wouldn’t be able to speak the sounds that required the lips to touch each other. P, Ph, Ba, Bha, M.
I remember lying in my parents’ bed as I recuperated and discovering the logic of the arrangement of the consonants in the Hindi alphabet. The sounds travel from the back of the mouth towards the front. It’s the fifth line - प फ ब भ म - that requires the lips to touch each other. I couldn’t say Papa, Bhaiya, Mamma, Pani and so on. It must have been a time of living on soup and khichdi.
Our school bus had crashed head-on into another bus on a blind turn inside Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University campus. The bus driver and some students in the front rows had serious injuries. My elder brother was in the back of the bus. He helped me out of one of the middle seats, picking up my bag for me. We forgot to look for my spectacles, which must have flown off my nose in the impact of the accident. All of us were taken to the Emergency ward of Safdarjung Hospital and some students were admitted there. After I received first aid, Bhai was sent to attend class and I was sent home early in a school bus.
It was the 1980s. We did not have a phone at home. My mother opened the door around noon and saw her daughter standing in front of her. Swollen face, bruised jaw, black eye. Blood on my white uniform.
“Where is Nitish?” she exclaimed. She looked behind me and down at the stairs.
“He’s in class,” I mumbled. He’s fine, I gestured.
She led me to the bedroom. I didn’t understand her anxiety for Bhai. This was supposed to be my moment with my mother. From the moment of the impact, I must have just bided my time till the moment when I would meet my mother. My Mum. And her first reaction was to look behind me. To look for Bhai.
I was hurt. Over the years, the wound didn’t entirely heal. It would come back to me at unexpected moments.
Today, I have crossed the age my mother was in that scene. Like her, I have three children. I am not Natasha the child any more, as much as I am Sudha, her mother. I look back at the scene where I return injured from the scene of my school bus accident and watch it with a new perspective.
A doorbell rings. On one side of the door, a 12-year-old injured child, still in shock. On the other side, her unsuspecting mother.
Sudha had sent two children safely to school. One of them returned with injuries from an accident. It took her a nanosecond to judge that Natasha is all right, she is safe. What happened to Nitish? How badly hurt is he? Why is he not here? I want to see him. NOW.
Our older daughters used to complain to me that I never scold the youngest. “She ruins our games, she doesn’t follow any rules. She always gets to sit in your lap.”
“She’s like a puppy,” I would say to placate them. “The mush in her skull hasn’t developed into a human brain yet. She’ll learn from you, just persevere.”
They didn’t look convinced. I’d get angry. Guilty. I’d decide to set an example. React sharply to the little one. In response there would be yelling, stomping, whimpering. We’d find ourselves in the middle of a collective meltdown.
Later, I’d survey the mess and try to make sense of it. Did I just lose my temper with a four-year-old for the sake of pleasing her six-year-old sibling? I’d sit myself down.
Sweetheart, Natasha, I think you misunderstood your role a little bit. The older children don’t want you to traumatize their sister. They are saying: “Be lovey-dovey and cootchie-cooey and weird with us the same way you are with the little one.”
Quite the same way that l had wanted to see my mother anxious for me too, when I was hurt. When she was done being the protective tigress ready to fight for her son, I wanted her to be my gentle mother hen too.
When I started writing this, I said to myself, write as if your mother is not going to read this. By now, I know I am writing a letter to my mother. And to the mother that I am.
Why do I need to revisit this story? I’m acknowledging that I felt very hurt. I’m letting go of that hurt. I’m sorry I misunderstood my mother. I am extending my hand to hold her to make up for the times when we were too distraught to reach out to each other.
Otherwise, the little palms of my children will slip from my hands and I will not be able to tell why.
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A version of this essay was published in Mint Lounge.
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Beautiful yaara
💕 One heart for the mother, one for the daughter who became the mother.