Musings of a Delhi Boy

My mother, like all moms, is a sweetheart.

Most of her life she spent wearing two hats, that of a homemaker and an educationist, with aplomb and panache. The Central Government flats we lived in for the first 17 years of my life were always well maintained, a cynosure of many a neighbor. With multiple postgraduate degrees under her belt, she was an educationist par excellence, teaching senior secondary girl students in a Delhi Government School (which catered to children primarily from underprivileged sections of the society) for more than four decades. Even at that time, she was a strong votary of educating the girl child, long, long before it became a tagline. On several occasions, it was a major challenge for the administration to get these girls to attend classes, and wean them away from household chores they were pushed into, often by ignorant, and sometimes defiant parents, who were bedeviled by the twin social evils of illiteracy and low income levels.

For several years after her superannuation, she would be accosted by her ex-students in a market or somewhere else (often accompanied by their families), who, on recognizing Mom, would narrate their stories of success and accomplishment, and express their sincere gratitude and seek her blessings. On such occasions, Mom’s face would light up and her chest would heave with justifiable pride.

But for me, all these accomplishments paled in comparison to the ditties and lullabies she used to sing for me at bedtime when I was a naughty toddler. Most of these were in simple, easy to understand Punjabi-our mother tongue. They were infused with modest life lessons and were presented in a way to make them easily comprehensible for my young mind. These were probably a part of our folklore, and had been passed on from one generation to the next by word of mouth, as often I heard my maternal grandmother, herself a woman of substance, hum these for me.

As I grew older, this childhood craving got left behind. I entered my teens, and sought the greener pastures of   friends and girlfriends, in college and university, and a reasonably decent job. Arranged marriage ensued shortly thereafter, and a beautiful daughter was born to my wife and me a few years later. This was followed by a whirlwind of transfers in different parts of the country for close to a decade. In the midst of all this I realized that the process of rearing children had undergone a tectonic shift over the years.

And the foremost casualty was the lullaby, along with other traditional modes of storytelling, which were lost in the mists of time- as far as I was concerned. They had been replaced by non-personal tools- through audio/video players and other assorted paraphernalia. Alas, these were still early days, the tip of the iceberg, as the content on the net- and soon to appear mobile phone- was yet to explode. Over the years, all this contributed to the potent status symbol syndrome that plagues our society, especially in Delhi. Along with this began the bizarre rush to enroll children, including toddlers, into extra-curricular activities – cricket, swimming, tennis, badminton, dance, singing, playing some instrument like the piano or the guitar and so on and so forth. The situation deteriorated to such an extent that a child was classified as a laggard if his or her acumen was not up to the mark in any of these activities.

The race to create a species of supermen and superwomen was truly underway. That was till the Covid 19 spread by the Corona virus brought the marauding homo-sapiens to a screeching halt, right in it’s tracks.

As the Corona pandemic hit people in countries all across the globe, I too was confined within my house in Delhi during the lock-down. Mom, well aware of my hypochondriac nature, and tendency to ponder a lot, started calling me several times in a day (from my brother’s house where she stays), maybe just to check how I was coping with the pressure, and ensure that my mind does not go through unnecessary turmoil or stress. And she was on cue.

Because, as days crystallized into weeks, I realized that the things about which I had been craving madly for years on end, might not be my real calling after all. During the pandemic- and at any given time- the foremost thing which matters is survival, of life, my life, and of those whom I love. Next comes health. And in this order there were three other items which formed the top five of my bucket list by the time the lock-down scored its half century. As an experiment, I gingerly jotted the top five pre-lock-down bucket list items by the side of these five points.

The results of the experiment were a rude eye-opener for me, something which I had not anticipated. I was shaken to realize that not one, not even one of the items in the two lists were common. It felt as if I had been bludgeoned by a sledgehammer. As if till now I had been moving on a wrong path, from what my true calling was. As if my journey had been entirely directionless, a complete waste of time and effort. As if I had lived in a fantasy world till now.

I was crestfallen. Dejected!

In desperation, I called Mom and asked her whether she still remembered the ditty and lullaby which she used to sing for me when I was a toddler- as I was not sure whether she would remember them after close to five decades. But even before I had completed my request, she had started humming it. A feeling of nostalgia overwhelmed me. I could feel tears trickling down my cheeks. How I wish she continues to sing this for me, for years to come, as I endeavor to carve a new path for myself.

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