Tulsi
Badrinath

A mother is born at the same time her child is born. A woman’s life is defined by this stage, separating those who have had children from those who have not. An experience both unique and fundamental to women, it is assumed that this experience is rewarding and fulfilling. When I had a child, and found that my own experience of motherhood varied from this standard ‘joyous experience’ viewpoint, I searched for novels that would describe to me what I was going through, I searched for books that were honest in portraying this overwhelming experience and I found one or two, at the most. Chiefly, it seemed to me, that other people, society, frowned on the expression of any sentiment that might be construed as a negative reaction to this exalted state.  

I wrote Meeting Lives to both explore this arguably central experience in a woman’s life and also to share my observations with others, who like me, might have searched for a description matching their own experience but did not find it. Rather than following the prescriptive, the novel follows the empirical, from the truth as observed and felt by the narrator and then seeks to place it against received wisdom. 

The more I thought about it, it seemed to me that the crux of the dilemma lay in the fact that most women take time to find themselves, to understand what motivates them and in what way to express themselves. If they are lucky this happens when they become adults, finish their higher education and attain some degree of maturity. Biological imperatives mean that just at the time a woman is able to conceive of an ‘I’ in all its peculiarities and quirks, just at the cusp of forming an adult identity of her own, the ‘I’ she has formed must now expand to include the state of motherhood. The boundaries that define her self must be erased or loosened to include this new identity, which she will discover in herself as her child grows and matures. So there is a tectonic shift here, between letting go in some sense the ‘I’ one has known in its solitary splendour and forging a new ‘I’ that is not fixed but will grow and mature with time, with the life stages of this new human being she has created within her. 

For some, whose identities are defined by the roles they play, wife, mother, daughter, this is a welcome change. For others, whose sense of self also allows room for an ‘I’ separate and distinct from the roles generated by kinship, motherhood implies a reworking and renegotiation of identity and a fight to reclaim space for oneself.  

Raja Rao, the eminent philosopher-novelist said that in India, we occupy both a horizontal space that relates to geography, and a vertical spiritual space. In my writing I want to map both these spaces. Meeting Lives is about a young mother trying to place the changes in her life due to motherhood in perspective. She is a dancer but has to place her career as a dancer second to her very naughty child. Because she is not the only or the first mother on earth, many myths and stories related to mother and child, such as that of Jabala Satyakama from the Upanishads, Swami Vivekananda and his mother, Krishna and Devaki are woven into the story. The universe itself is seen as the creative power of the Divine Mother.  

While searching for mother-child stories from our myths, I found it interesting that I could not find a single story about a mother and her daughter. Therefore, I had to invoke modern day mothers and their daughters to complete this lacuna. The resolution in the book is at the philosophical level of vedanta, where the young mother understands that in creating a baby, she has created a new human body for an atman to re-enter the world.  

Abbreviated excerpt from Meeting Lives. 

Sanju is drawing a plane. The possibilities of a flying object fascinate him. Planets, rockets, planes, he draws them all. In his box of crayons, the single steel grey colour is his favourite. 

My father is filling his pipe. He carefully separates strands of tobacco from the pouch, pressing them into the bowl. It is a skill he taught me as a child; not too loose, not too tight. He observes Sanju, a look of abstraction on his face.  

Then he speaks, ‘You know, when he was a little boy, Swami Vivekananda liked to draw. They would buy him water colours that cost some … four annas a box and he loved painting with them. He was very naughty as a child; probably naughtier than Sanju. So his mother complained to Shiva, she said to him, “I asked you for a son but you sent me one of your ganas instead”. ’ 

Appa lights his pipe and extinguishes the match, waving it rapidly. ‘What a child Shiva gave her! Actually, he gave Bhuvaneshwari Devi not one but three sons. Vivekananda had two younger brothers. Now this child, her eldest son, he was naughty and full of boundless energy, getting into all sorts of mischief.  And he had a spirited mind as well. He would tease his two elder sisters, make them run after him and then leap to the open drain where the poor girls couldn’t follow. “Catch me!” he’d say. Or he would argue.’ 

I smile. It is a familiar situation.  

My father draws on his pipe. The aroma of tobacco swirls around him. He settles deeper in his chair. ‘He was restless. How was this energy to be contained? Ultimately, after trying various methods, his mother found the only way of calming him down. She would pour cold water on his head, whispering “Shiva, Shiva” in his ear. It always worked.’  

‘In fact, when they wanted to name the child, they asked her to choose the name. So, she looked down at her baby, his life-breath the answer to her prayers, and she must have seen something in his eyes; a spark, an immense depth, something, for she was quiet for a while, lost in thought. Then she named him Vireshwar…They all called him Biley. Narendra was the name given to him later.’ 

I imagine her bringing up her son, but it is difficult to picture him without the robes and the turban. A little, rounded shape in a dhoti. I see a sturdy child whose face is all cheek; plump cheeks that compel one to pinch them, pull them, love him. Thick black hair parted in the middle. Liquid mischievous eyes, of a shape divine. When he smiles, he reveals a gap, a fallen tooth.  

Merriment radiates from him, as he climbs the forbidden champak tree or closes his eyes during a lesson. The thrill running through her when he repeats a shloka effortlessly, having heard it only once or when he sits on her lap and puts his arms around her and asks why Hanuman has not appeared in front of him even though he waited for ages in the banana grove. In the next second, he is up and about, racing to his pet goat. 

‘There was always apprehension in the family that he might take after his grandfather and renounce the world. Once he wore a gerua kaupina, nothing else but that tiny piece of ochre loin-cloth, and went about the house saying “I am Shiva. I am Shiva.” Think of what she must have felt and suffered, when he did take sanyasa, renounced the world. There are only two people a sanyasi bows to. His guru of course. The other, his mother, for she gives him permission to take sanyasa.’ Papa points at the air with the curved stem of the pipe for emphasis. ‘it’s she who has to learn renunciation first.’  

Bringing up a swami. A naughty swamiji: the thought engages me. Did she ever lose patience with him? Smack him on his cheek or bottom, and then regret it when he was grown, dressed in ochre?    

 ‘He was an extraordinary man. He remained deeply attached to his mother to the very end.’ My father puffs happily on his pipe. To him, Vivekananda is a presence. 

After a pause he continues, ‘A gentleman came looking for him once, in the hills of Almora. He knew him by the name Naren and that is the name he used while asking for him. The boy at the door of the ashram, must have been a brahmachari, the boy told him that there was no Naren Datta there. Narendranath had died a long time ago, but there was a Swami Vivekananda. He could meet him if he wished. Now Swami Vivekananda happened to hear this conversation and asked the boy, “what have you done.”’ 

‘Then he asked for the guest to be shown in and when the guest called him Swamiji, naturally, after what had just happened, Vivekananda immediately responded with, “When did I become a ‘Swami’ to you? I am still the same Naren. The name by which the Master used to call me is a priceless treasure. Call me by that name.”’ 

My father transfers the beloved Peterson pipe to his hand, and I know he is enjoying the warmth of the bowl against his palm.  

‘He was not one to be bound in any way,’ he continues, ‘least of all by notions of what it is to be a sanyasi. Towards the end of his life, he would say that he wanted to live in a small house by the Ganga with his mother. Look after her, do seva. But that was not to be. Maybe with this thought in his mind, even at a time when his own health was poor, he took her on a pilgrimage to East Bengal and Assam. This was about a year before he died. He wrote a letter to Sarah Bull, his American mother, saying that he was trying to fulfill this wish of hers.’  

I marvel as Appa quotes from memory. The words come alive in his rich, deep voice. ‘First Vivekanada announced, “I am going to take my mother on a pilgrimage.” Then he said, “This is the one great wish of a Hindu widow. I have brought only misery to my people all my life. I am trying to fulfil this one wish of hers.”  

‘He was truly concerned about her. When he went to the World Conference there was another Bengali there; Mazoomdar from the Brahmo Samaj. Well, he saw how this young Bengali was adored by the audience; he saw that and became jealous of his success. When he came back to India, he spread beastly rumours, terrible lies, that Swami Vivekananda was immoral; that he was associating with white women. This of a man who attributed his many strengths to the power of chastity: his brahmacharya.’ 

‘The Swami wrote a letter — I’ll find it in his collected letters and read it out to you– What he says is that it really does not matter to him what anyone should think of him. He is a sanyasi, a voice without a form as he once put it, but if his mother were to hear such things, what pain it would cause her.’ 

Perhaps without even intending to, my father has located my fear; too overwhelming to be articulated, and soothed me in an indescribable way. Naren’s mother. She too had a child who was difficult to manage. She complained, to Shiva. That did not diminish her love for her child. Neither did the complaint diminish her child. Look what he grew up to be! Within me, an idea unfolds its wings; hope makes its way from her life to mine.