by Vinayak Naik
vinayaknaik59@gmail.com

This is my tribute to someone who was the dearest person in the world to me – my own mother, Sushilabai Nayak – who, on the 24th of May, 2008 suddenly slipped into a deep sleep, never to wake up again.

That fateful evening, there was not even a hint of the catastrophe that lay in store for me. It all happened in a flash, as it were. She kept talking to me, like she normally did, until ten minutes before passing into history. For the first time in my life, I saw a death take place right in front of me. Her benignant eyes roved all over me for a while before settling firmly into fixity. And that marked the end of someone whom I always thought – irrationally, I know – would forever live with me.

Honestly, for the last six years - ever since the demise of my father - I lived with just two preoccupations: my office and my mother. For all these years I was virtually dead to the world after 6:00 p.m., committed as I totally was, to being with my mother from that time onwards till my departure for the office the next morning. The only time I returned home after 6:00 p.m. during this period was on the 1st of August, 2005 – when GUJ (the Goa Union of Journalists) feted me. In fact, I even skipped the dinner which followed my felicitation, so as to be back home with my mother at the earliest.

I would normally reach home at 5.45 p.m., and such was my mother’s concern for me, that even a few minutes delay in my reaching home, during the rains in particular, was enough to make her break into a torrent of tears. Saturday used to be a very special day for her.  She would be very happy that day because she knew I would return home early – in the afternoon itself. That’s what I had actually done that distressful Saturday on which Providence took my mother away. I would hand-feed my mother like a baby – diurnally. Whilst feeding her that night, I didn’t in the least imagine that it would be the last time I was doing so.

Although my father was formally well qualified (he was a pharmacist by qualification, but a postmaster by profession), my mother, in my evaluation, was considerably more intelligent and creative. My mother’s education did not extend beyond Segundo Grau which, incidentally, she had passed with distinction. She was then stopped in her academic tracks, as higher education for girls was not looked upon with favour in those days – in the 1930s, that is. If my mother had been allowed to pursue her education, given her transcendent talent, she could have, academically, scaled the sky.
 
Until she inexplicably sank into a state of chronic depression, my mother was full of fun, and would send just about anybody who interacted with her into peals of laughter. Every joke she cut had a distinctive stamp of her creativity. Honestly, my much-lauded about memory is attributable entirely to my mother. Her brain functioned, computer-like, even before the advent of the computer. Though not formally qualified as one, my mother was an exceptionally adept economist. My father had the habit of making over his entire monthly pay packet to her. And she would budget it to perfection. About a thousand rupees is all that he would earn as Assistant Presidency Post Master of Bombay GPO in the early '70s, and my mother would spend that amount adroitly, covering the various requirements of our then seven-member family. And surprise, surprise, she would even manage to save something too! 
 
Unquestionably, my mother was the very source of joy and inspiration to me. Her love for me bordered on the maniacal. Although depressed and bedridden, she would focus on my nourishment. Her habit was to ask me, over and over again, whether I had eaten properly. And she was at it, even until half an hour before her demise – repeatedly asking me, as she always did, whether I had eaten properly. With my mother gone, to me, my home has, overnight, turned into a virtual graveyard as memories of her keep haunting me at every turn.  Her demise is a mortal blow I am reeling under. The vacuum she has created in my life cannot be filled.  Coincidentally, only a few days before my mother’s death, I had a bad dream in which I had seen her pass away. It turned out to be an ominous trailer of what was to come, because exactly what I had dreamt came to pass.

That dreadful night, my mother kept calling out to me, urging me to come to sleep at 8:00 p.m. itself. However, the next day being a Sunday, I told her I would delay a bit and I continued with my office work till 11:00 p.m. Had I the slightest inkling of the calamity that was to come, I would have shown a readiness to go to bed even at 5:00 p.m. When I went to sleep at last, as it turned out, my mother had only ten more minutes before eternally falling asleep.

The woman behind my success, up to this point, has unmistakably been my mother. I have no doubt at all that she’ll keep spurring me on from the Great Beyond too.

Till we meet again, in life after this life, it’s sayonara to you, dearest Mother, from your inconsolable son.

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A post-graduate in Economics, Vinayak Naik is the Editor-in-Chief of the Goa Today monthly magazine. Apart from his keen journalistic skills, he is also well known for his phenomenal memory. Not only can he tell which day of the week any date falls on, even up to decades ago, but he can also memorise with relative ease, , telephone numbers, long lists of words with their meanings  as well as synonyms and antonyms. Vinayak Naik resides at Panjim, Goa.