Mom on the run
It’s been a tad difficult keeping in touch with my peripatetic mother these past weeks. First, she insisted on the house in Bikaner being aired and spring-cleaned to receive an annual gathering of family members, so staff was despatched from Delhi to have everything spick and span. Cooks were employed to serve in gargantuan quantities, and menus set and changed on whim by various clanswomen, causing not a little consternation in the kitchen. Rooms, beds and linen were allotted on the basis of hierarchy but ended up being occupied on the principle of first-come, first-served, banishing the stragglers to lodgings in neighbourhood hostelries. Guests arrived by air, train, bus and car, and one was never quite sure how many residents were in at any one time, but my mother’s wish of spending additional days at home was thwarted as siblings, aunts and cousins chose to move on once the festivities were over.
Finding herself alone, my mother decided to pack up and leave for Jaipur, hiring a driver for the journey and taking along her car to ensure her freedom from the burdens of family. When I thought she was with my brother, it turned out she was staying, instead with her daughter. When my wife, on work in Jaipur, turned up at her door to check on my mother, it was to find she’d shifted now to her son, and this toing and froing continued for a while before she fled to her sister’s house in Kota. But her sister was leaving soon for Bengaluru, so off my mother went to my sister’s farm on the outskirts of the city where the network is so terrible, it’s difficult to make out whether she’s there or already elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the security guard called from Bikaner to say she was returning in a few days, which I knew to be a ploy to keep the domestic staff on their toes. In reality, I know she is headed to Delhi even if the dates remain unclear. She did mention stopping en route, perhaps at her brother’s, or mine, but for how long she plans to stay, there is no indication, nor of when she will be amidst us. No longer dependent on us for her intra-city commuting needs, she’s choosing her destination and setting her calendar on whim rather than a fixed schedule.
Nor do we know how long she will stay, or where her base is to be, making it difficult to manage the paperwork required to keep her in the style that she likes. Bank officials have been calling to ask where they might find her to sign documents. Courier packages follow in her trail but fail to catch up with her. Sundry relatives wanting to meet her have more chance of spotting her on WhatsApp images posted by those who have been luckier in catching up with her in real time.
There’s a cupboard with her clothes and shoes and other essentials in our home, at my sister’s, and at my brothers’. Her matching woollens might be distributed along the trail of her temporary residences, but she’s less fussed about it than she used to be. Everyone knows her dietary requirements and her medicines, and she has a familiar hairdresser in every port. She might go AWOL, but the extended clan is more than equipped to take care of her should she turn up unexpectedly. Still, if only I knew where she is headed, or is right now, I’d worry less about a mom gone missing.