JAN 16 — Today they cremate my mom. I want to say a few things, before that I apologise for the personal nature of this column. Please return next week if you want politics, culture or something controversial.
My mom died on Tuesday and today is her funeral. At the end of it all, she will be placed inside an incinerator.
Let’s start from the beginning
Let me introduce you to this person, my mother.
She was 15 years old when she married a man from Malaysia, and arrived shortly after in Port Klang. It was the first time she went beyond 60 kilometres of her home in Tamil Nadu’s Alangudi.
Within five years she had five children and lost one in an incubator shortly after delivery. She raised a few other children as her own, and today we have the most eclectic group of family members.
As for day to day living, only mom and I lived in the family house for the last 10 years.
That changed recently. This evening I’ll be home all alone.
My earliest memory of mom was helping her wash clothes in the bathroom of our rented house in Kampung Pandan. I am fairly certain today thinking about it that I was distracting her rather than actually helping her with the cleaning. It was just the two of us since my siblings then had already started school, and dad was at one of his two jobs.
Mom always had time for her children, even if it inconvenienced her.
An Indian winter
Last month, related to work, I was asked to fly to India’s Chennai. I took my mom with me, so that we could make a trip to her birthplace south of Tiruchirapalli.
We went to both my parents’ hometowns. (My late dad’s village is Konapet, not far from my mom’s village.)
She was so ecstatic about the whole affair despite being sick, before, during and after the trip.
She showed me her favourite places in and around her home.
Somehow, it seems to me, that she managed to get one child from Malaysia to see first-hand all that was and will continue to be the connection points for all her children.
A loop has been completed and responsibilities are mine to meet now. I’m happy to have this opportunity.
She just wanted to give
My mother, Kanthimathi, never spoke of great ideas but she was unrelenting in expressing absolute love.
For her, to serve was to live.
Or maybe, to serve was to love.
We, the children, went to national schools because mom felt we needed to get a better education despite both she and dad attending exclusively Tamil schools in India and Cheras.
Since she could only write and speak fluently in Tamil it meant she was signing away her children in the long run. When children speak in a different ideas language, then staying with their thinking is a daily challenge rather than a casual adjustment.
There is this distance between mom and her children. This distance is to be a memory to be reminded, not dissected.
Faith in things unseen
The last 48 hours has been about her children, some flying in from different parts of the world, seeking ways to get a smooth running ceremony without upsetting the elder relatives.
There have not been dogmatic face-offs on how rites are to be performed among the children even if the relatives have expressed reservations.
Even if the children are not keen on tradition as much as the community would insist on, we are not a pessimistic lot.
We are not the praying sort, but there is an uncanny conviction in wanting to believe in the goodness and decency of Man no matter how the cookie crumbles.
From our mother I suppose we inherited the ability of believe even if proof is not present yet.
The irony is while we lack spiritual consistency, I don’t think we lack faith.
A goodbye must happen
I am nervous now. Funerals do not change facts, they only underline them.
Dawn is breaking and I am sitting near my mom’s body. In a short period of time, every physical memory of my mom will be removed.
It is frightening to be an orphan.
I’m a regular guy, my mom made my coffee in the mornings and we go down to the local pasar malam (night market) irregularly. I don’t feel regular today.
Goodbye, ma. I’ll get on with it.
