Tiwari's mother: End of a family

Tiwariu00e2u0080u0099s mother arrived a week later by train. She looked the same, just sadder, if such a thing was even possible. Representation Pic/Getty Images

All I can tell you about Tiwari's mother's family is that her last surviving son came to Mumbai and died as a watchman in my building. Everything else is hearsay. Once, during the three months that she stayed in our house at Lokhandwala Complex, Andheri West, she addressed me, but I could not understand her Madhya Pradesh dialect. After some minutes, she broke down sobbing. I stood there, like a hare pinned in a floodlight.

You have to picture a face out of an Anjolie Ela Menon painting, gaunt, with a steady gaze haunted by an ineffable dignity. You might be reminded of cats, full of secrets and tragedy and yet perfectly poised in any weather. She slept on a thin cotton cloth spread out a bare, cold mosaic floor, didn't seem to need anything more.

Her main family was a man who left her life one day without explanation. That man, back in Dodi, Madhya Pradesh, had not understood her dignity in all the years he knew her. Tiwari's mother had been married off to him as an adolescent. Nothing can be gathered about him except from his aftermath - the eight children, seven male and one female, that he sired on her.

Tiwari Shivmurat was the youngest. In total, this was the family she no longer has. The strangulated man who was her husband left one day to live as a sanyasi in search of his soul, as many Indian men apparently do. As to how Tiwari's mother and her children would survive in his wake, nothing was said. There was some land, there was suspected to be a God, and if nothing worked out, there was always fate.

Years passed. Tiwari's mother created a space in her heart for her delinquent husband. One day she went to the riverbank, smashed her bangles against a rock and performed a little ceremony for the dead. From then, she dressed as widows do, and deemed her missing husband a soul lost in transit.

Other souls were lost in transit. Five of her sons had died of various diseases of childhood for which there were neither medicines in Dodi nor money for medicines. Her only daughter was married away to a distant husband, for better or, more probably, worse.

Not knowing who would strike next, God or destiny, Tiwari's mother hoarded her only two surviving kin. Tiwari was good-looking, full of attractive arrogance and easy to fight with or be fond of, but the elder one was already getting that glazed look that comes from a dreadful dependence of cannabis. Tiwari's mother earned the bleakest of livings by walking door to door, offering to grind wheat into flour.

Tiwari, fuelled by poverty and ambition, left to seek his fortunes in Bombay. He died there after several months as a chowkidar in our building. During his time there, I heard, he had befriended a wealthy young wastrel. They had gone driving one night and towards 2.30 am, had driven at high speed into the dark back of a parked truck. The car's owner survived, as the rich always do, but Tiwari suffered cerebral haemorrhage and went into a coma. He died without recovering in the intensive care unit of a nearby hospital. Two strangers showed up, distantly related, they said, to claim his corpse and attend to the last rites. They took the ashes home in an urn to Tiwari's mother.

I imagine she cried yet another time and then somehow found a way to look this new bereavement in the eye. Some weeks later, she received a message saying that she should go to Bombay: apparently she was entitled to legal recompense from the Accidents Tribunal, and the amount could be several lakhs of rupees.

For the first time in her life, Tiwari's mother left Dodi. My mother, then secretary of the building society, helped with her paperwork. Meanwhile, the old lady stayed as our guest.

Her cheeks gained some colour and substance during her time in Bombay, and she smiled a little oftener. However, as word spread of the imminent end of her poverty, scavengers began to gather, mostly 'relatives' she had never heard of. At the Accidents Tribunal, more predators gathered, creatures in black who offered to make her rich on her son's remains, though strictly on a commission basis.

Finally, my mother found her an honest advocate. My two dogs loved her, for she had much unclaimed love to give. Whenever they came cringing towards her, twitching to be petted, that was when we would see her smile. What else? She made very fine chapatis for herself, soft as wishes and perfectly round, and once she made a few for us. Finally, when her case was registered at the Tribunal, she left for Dodi.

The rest is also hearsay. While she was away, her only surviving son had apparently sold away everything in the hut, paying for drugs with the proceeds. Tiwari's mother's cheque arrived after three years, while she sat alone in a completely empty hut in the bitter Madhya Pradesh winter. A message was sent to her and she arrived a week later by train. She looked the same, just sadder, if such a thing was even possible. And always, that ineffable dignity that surrounds Indian women who have survived the battering life gives them. By then, I don't think she had anyone left to care for.

Here, viewed from there. C Y Gopinath, in Bangkok, throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai, the city that raised him. You can reach him at cygopi@gmail.com Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

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