‘If you love something
dearly, set it free.
If it comes back, it is
yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.’
I sat on the aesthetically sculpted stone stairs of the
National Institute of Fashion Technology, trying to figure out this
unique philosophy of life. In the sweltering Delhi heat, we were huddled
together in distinct groups - the panicky parents who were trying their very best
to set their loved one free and the about to be freed fledglings, all poised to
take their first flight into an unknown jungle to try and redefine fashion.
It seemed like just the
other day when I had left my little girl on her first day at school and
observed her from afar. Although totally lost and confused herself, she was
consoling a bawling kid, assuring him in her lisping lingo that there was
nothing to worry about. Today the scenario wasn’t different either. Only she
looked like a pretty picture of an oasis, surrounded by deserted young faces.
Outwardly she looked composed but her eyes flinched and her lips twitched every
time a senior passed by- distinctive traits of a nervous wreck and that which
only a mother’s eye could discern.
Suddenly some weird things
whizzed by. One of the girls had jewelry dangling from a pierced lip and the
other from a perforated eyebrow. Something pierced my heart. I remembered
wiping the solitary teardrop that had trickled down her cheeks when her
three-year-old earlobes were first pricked. How many more such God-knows-where
piercing ceremonies would be undertaken once my back was turned? I
instinctively glanced at her and was relieved to see the unspoken statement in
her wise eyes. ‘Don’t worry Mummy’, it said, ‘I might be a bit senti but
I’m definitely not mental’. Another group arrived. My conventional eyes
noticed that one of them had a neckline so deep you could almost drown in it. I
again looked at my daughter. ‘Relax Mummy’, her eyes spoke from across, ‘I might
design some of this stuff but I’ll certainly not be getting into it’.
An announcement was then
made. ‘There will now be an Orientation programme’ it said. ‘Those in ‘Group A’
please proceed to the GMT department. Those in ‘B’, to the AMMM, those in ‘C’
to the KDT and those in ‘D’ to the FDIT. There was a sudden disorientation in
the excited parental group. Everyone rose to the occasion and began memorizing
the abbreviated allocated alphabets, each trying to reiterate their respective
child’s allotment and each wanting to escort them safely to the den. I hurried
across to my daughter and grasping her hand firmly began to lead her to the HMT
department. ‘Better hurry before all the seats are occupied’ I whispered. ‘Its
GMT Mummy’, she said agitatedly, ‘and relax, will you? I’ll find my way there.’
It was then time for
departure. She threw her purse and clung to me. I was already an experienced
mother, she reassured me, seasoned enough with the pangs of separation from my
first born, so there was really nothing to worry about. It was difficult to
explain to her that in the matters of the heart experience hardly mattered. She
asked me to look after myself instead. I hugged my responsible little girl, my
eyes all the time on the purse that she had flung across and where the keys to
her flat and her almirah, apart from her certificates and a portion of my
husband’s salary lay.
It was not until the train
had chugged away from Nizamuddin that reality finally hit me. I lay awake the
whole night wondering about who the fool was that had said something about
absence making the heart grow something. A few hours of absence and it was
making mine fretful and frenzied and frantic. Anything but fonder. What if the
forgetful thing left the burning iron on her mattress? She could burn down the
whole apartment. What if the careless child mixed the coloured with the whites?
Her entire wardrobe would either start to blush or turn black and blue. What if
the nonchalant young woman skipped her breakfast- the most important meal of
the day? What if…………?
I sat upright, took a deep breath and for the first time faced a bitter truth- a fact that Nature had been so subtly trying to tell every mother ever since the severing of the umbilical cord. There comes a time in everyone’s life when one has to dissever the invisible ties too. The time had come now. To finally let go! All these years I had looked after something that needed looking after. Now it required to be set free. All these years I had loved something dearly. Now I had to set it free. But I realised with a pang that this was actually the easy part- the setting it free. The waiting to see ‘if it came back’. The wondering if ‘it was’ or ‘never was’ really mine. Well, that was the more difficult one.
Nargis Natarajan, wife of Shanker Natarajan, IRAS(1976)