A massage for mum

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Have you ever hugged a person, who simply stood there like a flag pole on Republic Day?

Uff, let's say I've had my fair share of those, including my Amma, Indu Shedde. I'm a very touchy-feely person with my family, and while Amma lovingly exchanged hugs when I was a kid, she grew stiffer in the Accepting Hugs Dept as I turned adult. For years she has refused my offers to give her a reflexology session - a foot massage - it ranks much higher in her eeks scale, than a hug. There are very few close people, to whom I would offer a foot massage, yet they include some who shriek and refuse it outright. Indians have loaded subconscious associations with the feet - dirt, neecha, low caste, shudra, low class, low status, polluting, and worse. Perhaps they imagine I'm a woman of high status, who couldn't possibly do for them what a parlour girl would do.

I've also had strange encounters. Recently I gave a foot massage to a relative, who was in mourning for his wife, who had passed away the previous day, and was unable to sleep well. I said it would help him relax and sleep better. As he lay prone in bed, I massaged the soles of his feet for a long time, and he seemed to fall asleep, so I tiptoed out and went home. The next evening, he phoned to say he had slept deeply. But I myself couldn't get up. My entire body ached and seemed to weigh a ton, so I collapsed in bed and woke up only around 3 pm. Later, when I mentioned this to a friend who does ‘energy work,' she said "Oh, you should have ‘grounded' yourself after the massage, then you'd be fine." That's when I realised the weight of grief, and how easily grief transfers via energy - in fact, we seemed to have unwittingly exchanged energies - even though our only contact was my hands with the soles of his feet. Wow, I have so much to learn about the invisible universe.

Anyway, to return to Amma, she has mollified over the years. Unusually, this week, she said her skin was getting dry and itchy in winter, so would I apply some cream on her skin? Of course, I said, and would she also like a massage? Yes, she replied, by now having learnt to jettison years of conditioning about feet, status, caste and class, and simply enjoy the massage. Amma's skin is very soft, very huggable, and so fair, that some neighbours refer to her as "tee Parshee" (that Parsi woman), and someone even called her Annie Besant, because of her short, white hair, which pleased Amma no end.

Somehow, when massaging my mum lovingly with my hands, I remembered all the decades that Amma has lovingly looked after Papa, my sister Sarayu Kamat and me with hers - kneaded dough and rolled out and roasted chapatis for us, day after day, year after year, cooked rice-dal-veggies for us, made goodies on festive days; bought second hand foreign magazines at the raddiwala to look for classy dress patterns (‘Princess Cut') to stitch at home for us within a modest budget, embroidered dresses for her girls (she embroidered my name M-E-E-N-A on the bib of one such dress, that made feel insanely special, as even the richie-rich kids or bossy class prefect didn't own one). Those hands held mine as she walked four trips to school and back each day: two ways to drop us to school, and two ways to pick us up from school. She also carried me on her shoulders all the way home, when I fell asleep after watching English movies like Sound of Music, Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady at Regal Cinema, followed by dinner consisting of dahi-bhat (curd-rice) and keshar bhat (sweet saffron rice) by the Gateway of India, the sea and moonlight. So much love has poured out of those hands into my sister and me all our lives, and even though I could never return it in the same measure, with this very small gesture of an affectionate massage, it all came flooding back to me, and to the sweetest music: small, small snores of my mother, fast asleep.

Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist.
Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com