By Upendra Mishra
“Well, you might have a bigger pile of mangoes, but you don’t have your mother,” my cousin Gita screamed at the top of her voice in uncontrolled anger. I was shocked. I told her that I have a mother; Amma is my mother.
“No, you never had your mother. Amma is not your real mother. Your mother died many years ago,” she kept spitting those words at me. I had no idea what she was saying.
This incident happened when I was seven or eight. Gita and I were in our mango orchard. She was a couple of years younger than me, but we were always together, playing together and having fun. We would fight, argue and compete most of the time for everything. This was true in our orchards as well.
During the mango season, both of us would make our own mango piles and collect mangoes as they fell from the tree. We had so many mango trees. Often our pile will be equal, but one day my pile became huge with over 50-60 mangoes. Gita had very few. I started to tease her and show off. I was very happy, but Gita was very upset. As I kept teasing her, she became more frustrated and angrier, and then she snapped, suddenly, and told me a truth that I hadn’t been prepared to hear.
A little bit later after her outburst, we both collected our mango piles. I had so many mangos that they did not fit in my bag, and I gave the remainder to Gita. As we were walking home, I kept thinking about what Gita had told me about my mother. I did not believe her, but at the same time there was no reason for her to lie. I did not know what to do.
I was very close to one of my buas. As soon as I entered home, I ran to my bua and told her what Gita had told me in the orchard.
“Gita told me today that I don’t have my mother and that she died long time ago. Is that so? Then, who is Amma?” I asked her.
She looked at me with a sad face, hugged me and kissed me like a thousand times, kept silent for a few minutes, and then said: “Yes, now you’re old enough to know that your mother died when you were about two-year old. You had a younger sister, and she also died,” my Bua told me as a sea of tears was swelling in her eyes and fell like a giant waterfall.
“Who is Amma, then,” I asked her.
“She is your stepmother,” Bua said.
I had no idea what to do, where to go, or whom to talk to. No one had told me anything about this. Before that day, I had always thought Amma was my mother.
As a little child, when I walked around the narrow and muddy paths of my village, people would just lift me, put me on their shoulders or on their backs and carry me through. If there was a mango tree or guava or jamun tree, they would grab a few fruits and offer me to indulge with them. I could have had anything I wanted then. I felt like everyone in my village was integral part of me—from young to adults to old.
I can still feel their soft touch. Their gentle gaze at me still takes me back to my tiny village of about 100 families. There was something magical in my village, as far as I was concerned. There was one thing that always nagged me, though. Why was everyone being so nice to me? Why would they drop the things they were doing and hold me, take care of me, spend some time with me? They did not do any of these things with any other child my age.
I lived with that question of why. Why me? Why does everyone love me so much? Am I a special child? What is in me that attracts everyone? Or, my mind worried, what is wrong with me? Why not the other kids? The same treatment would happen at the elementary school of my village, too, where I had studied until the 5th grade. Teachers would be extremely nice to me, although I couldn’t understand why at the time.
I remember one incident when I was in the 4th grade. Our school routine was simple. My next-door friend, Navnath and I would walk to school by 9:00 am. During the break at midday, we will come home for lunch and then back to school, and return home around 4:30 pm, including on Saturdays.
There was no change in the routine. Every day when we came for lunch, my grandfather would be sitting in the veranda near the main entrance of my house, and he would ask the same question everyday: how many math problems did you get right in your class today? I would tell him what happened in the class. If I had gotten all correct, he would be very happy. If I did not, he would scold me.
One day my friend Navnath told my 4th grade teacher that how daily my grandfather asks the same question and if I had got them wrong, he would scold me. My teacher became very upset. I remember his name: Rameshar Tiwari. He gently walked to me in the classroom. We all used to sit on the floor. There were no chairs or tables. He sat down next to me, and asked: is it true that your baba (grandfather) scolds you when your math answers are incorrect? I said: Yes. “Why did not you tell me that?” He asked. “If you had told me, I would mark every answer correct,” he continued with affection.
After that, I never had wrong answers in my math class during the entire fourth grade. He never did that to any other students. During those days, punishing students (physically) was a norm. Other students would be punished for getting things wrong, or for not paying attention. I was, however, always treated with delicate care and affection—no matter what I did.
My special treatment in my school also bothered me. I wondered why everyone treats me differently. I wanted to be handled like all the other kids, both at school and in my village. We lived in a joint family and grew up with a lot of cousins, uncles and aunts, but even at home I was dealt with special affection and care.
Soon after my conversation with Bua on that fatal day, I returned to the mango orchard by myself. There was a large mango tree, and we had named it Maldahwa. It had strong, low hanging branches. I climbed onto one of the branches and sat there alone until the sun set and it started to become dark. I just kept crying all by myself.
That was probably the last time in my entire life I cried. I have never cried since then. Sometimes I wish I could cry one more time like that. But it seems that that day, all the tears dried up in me.
PART 1 END. To be continued next week..Part 2
(Mr. Mishra is managing partner of the Waltham, MA-based diversifed media firm The Mishra Group, which published Life Sciences Times, Boston Real Estate Times, IndUS Business Journal and INDIA New England News.) He writes about his three passions: marketing, scriptures, and gardening.)