Childhood is the most romantic period in our life. All the memories of childhood is a mixed bag of real happenings with a lot of imagination, emotion and fairy tale inspirations when perhaps the black and white reality takes a back seat and simple incidents become very very special.
To an adult person, the incident might be just another incident but to a child, the simplest of incidents etches a story deep in the mind.
I was a little young girl full of dreams in my eyes. Each person who came to my notice was like a character I read in some story.
I would imagine a lot about those characters and try to find the resemblance of these real-life persons with that of my imaginative world. Such was one character, Ammai.
She was an old lady since the time I have seen her. She would come every day to our house at around 11:30 in the morning; slowly enter through the main door then close the door and call out loud to my elder sister Khuku, till she gets an answer.
That was the way she used to announce her arrival. Then she would sit near the long, straight staircase which starts from the main door of the house to the drawing-room on the first floor.
My sister would then give her something to eat with love and my mother made sure to add something special made that day for all in the family.
There was a small bathroom below the long staircase where she would wash her hands and legs before having the food. Ammai was treated with respect and treated well in our home. She was our domestic help but almost a family member.
But she will never accept ’anna’ or rice and full meals like lunch or dinner at our house. Her Gurudev had instructed her not to do so.
She would wash all the utensils, wash all clothes, sweep and mop the floors. All the works she did with great care as if it is her own house.
She would also help with cutting vegetables and cleaning the utensils of the small Mandir we had in our house.
At around 3 in the afternoon, she would take to cleaning some cosy corner of the rooms and take a nap sitting. No one of us ever disturbed her.
After doing all the works of the household it is very natural to feel tired and sleepy. Sometimes I felt fun looking at her sleeping with a duster in her hand while sitting next to a window. I would call my elder sister and show her. We would then look at each other and smile and then leave her without disturbing.
Our father would come from his dispensary at around noon for his lunch. He was a saintly person who would always take care of the people around him and whoever comes at his door for help. Ammai held our father with the highest respect and considered him to be a Devta.
She would help my mother in all the works towards my father during that period of the day so that Babu does not feel any discomfort.
The days passed by. She had been with us for a very long time when my eldest sister was born. We are four daughters to our parents. My eldest sister was married at that time.
The mystery about Ammai was no one knew where she lived.
Who all were there in her family we never saw. We had no clue to her address.
Though we had heard stories of her son's daughters her husband. And then there was her Gurudev who was perhaps the most important person in her life.
From time to time she would take leave for a few days to go and meet her Gurudev.
That day after all the work of the house was done by her it was time for her to take leave. She told my mother that she is going on leave for a week. Her Gurudev has called her and she is going to see him. My mother gave her permission. She left.
It had been a long time and we almost forgot about Ammai. It had been years now. My father had to look for another lady to attend to the chores of the house.
Ammai never returned from her Gurudev’s house. We thought she had died. She was that old. Death would not have been unnatural at that age. She never told where she lived or no one knew her or her family members to get any news of her.
That day, it was around 11 in the morning. We were having a late breakfast and tea after the daily essential chores of the morning hours of the day.
"Khuku! Khuku!" the sound came. First, we thought who will call my sister at his hour.
But the voice was very familiar and we thought, "How can it be? It has been two years now".
All of us ignored and thought we heard it wrong. But we cannot be wrong three times. My elder sister went to the main door to see.
"How can it be?" we were still thinking in our mind. It has been so long. But truths are stranger than stories. ‘Khuku’ came back and called us with her.
We arrived at the door. A rickshaw was standing in front of the door and the rickshaw owner was standing by the side and was looking indecisively.
He told he is carrying her straight from the Government hospital. The hospital discharged her today. As her last wish, the old lady asked the hospital doctor to send her to Babu for the remaining few days of her journey.
She was maimed and crippled by paralysis and lying as a small heap of clothes at the footrest of the cycle rickshaw. With the help of the rikshaw owner, my sister and my mother helped her inside the house and helped her lie down downstairs inside the gate.
It was almost noon and I felt father will now enter the house and will be angry at this creature who left without any information and has arrived again at this condition.
The poor old lady laid quietly with her eyes moistened when finally father arrived. A whole new world opened before me and a sea of experience unfurled before my eyes which was much more fulfilling than my imaginations.
I saw kindness in the eyes of my father as soon as his eyes went on to the lump lying in one corner.
My father was an Ayurveda doctor. He started examining Ammai. His touch proved to heal as the touch helped the poor old lady comfort and feel at home. She seemed relaxed at heart now.
My father made all the arrangements to shift Ammai to a middle room at ground floor. A bed was made at the ground inside the room and everything was done for her treatment to start.
Father told. "Listen! She had been looking after us, all her life. Now it is our turn to look after Ammai in her bad days."
"Perhaps she has no one to look after her at this age and hence she has come to us with the hope of spending the last few days of her journey. We should be thankful to her and God has given us this noble opportunity to serve."
Treatment started immediately. There were medicines prepared by father to be given at different times of the day. I was still small for such works. My sister would do all the caring and I would be at her side and observe.
Father would also administer injections from time to time perhaps twice a day. Mother would put a special oil prepared by father and message the whole body of Ammai. Our parents will help Ammai with a bedpan for ablutions. Ammai could not move. All the toilet works were to be done at the bed itself.
It was really hard work and had become a daily discipline for us. I would go to Ammai and observe her from some distance. Sometimes she would be asleep, sometimes she would give some blank look.
After a month I felt some difference in her eyes. Her eyes have become more expressive now rather than blank and expressionless.
This was the same story day in and day out. Two months went by. Now it was time to rejoice though a little. The old lady used to move a little in her bed. I was the first to notice this and informed to my sister and mother. No one believed till the time they found out themselves.
It was not that she was moving frequently. Once in awhile, there will be some movement and one needs to wait long enough to observe this.
Paralysis at this age is not a thing to be cured and death is the only event that will relieve Ammai from this. We never thought this to happen and that too so soon. It was just over three months she arrived and the treatment is on.
One morning when my mother went with food in her hand Ammai expressed her desire to sit up and have the food. All this while she could talk. God had left open that option to her.
Mother and sister helped her body to sit on the bed. To our surprise, she could make it. And all the more surprising she had the full bowl of food sitting and then got tired and again lied down.
Maybe this is a glimpse of life remaining in the old lady before lying to final rest. That’s what I thought in my mind. But the treatment and all the care was going on with all the devotion that we could gather.
God had more in store for us. Another month went by and there was more sign of recovery and improvement seen in Ammai. Now it’s time for our surprises.
Ammai could now help herself up on her bed. She could now sit up by herself and try and eat her food. Ayurveda is the purest form of medical science and father was a wizard in the science.
When we have left it to fate and took death granted for the old lady, father was silently working for the cure of the old lady. When we were only thinking to make the last days better for Ammai father was perhaps determined to cure her.
Perhaps we also got enthused by the response of the treatment and did all with more vigour to cure the old lady. Sometimes there would be no sign of further improvements when we had to speak to ourselves to keep ourselves motivated in our mission.
Day in and day out. It is never easy to keep on caring. It is only the blessings of our parents and God that we could keep caring for old Ammai.
More than six months. And then one-day Ammai expressed her willingness to stand. We all were once again surprised. Yes, she could stand with our help and in few more days, she could go to the toilet with help.
This was a great achievement and relief as well. It is not easy to clean the bedpan each day.
Now Ammai could do many of her works herself. A lot of our work, especially mother’s, got reduced.
Days passed by and now Ammai could walk on her own. She was getting well faster and faster. Slowly she started working again. We insisted her on taking rest but she would work. Perhaps she was happier than anyone else regaining her health after the traumatic period of her life.
When we have all the health we dream of taking more rest and work less. But when we lose health it is the only dream to regain health so that we can do a lot of work.
Ammai was again like the same domestic help who once left for her Gurudev’s home. She would do all the work of the house and took the afternoon naps by the side of the window with a duster in her hand.
This is not less than a miracle. The Government Hospital had written her off and released her from the hospital and left her to her fate when father took the responsibility of the helpless poor old lady and started treating her.
Though Ammai had a lot of respect for her Gurudev and would go to meet him every now and then; she did not go to her Gurudev when she needed help the most.
She never had meals in our house since her Gurudev had instructed. But now she had everything in our house only. Perhaps a saviour is beyond any comparison and above all. Ammai showed all her gratitude in her work in the house. Now he gave our father the status of God and she would repeat this many times in a day.
Human behaviour is various and strange. Again the day came when the old lady, now fully fit and fine, expressed her strong desire to go and meet her Gurudev.
We never knew who her Gurudev was. Finding out that might had been a stranger thing which we never tried. Father’s wisdom never allowed us to venture into her personal life.
A lifesaver is more than anyone in the world. A healthy life is a wonderful thing.
There might be a precious and important person in our lives but when you do not have health all seem to be distant and indifferent.
At least such was the situation in case of Ammai.
After that day we never saw her or heard from her. At times her name comes in our discussions and each time we are left with a mystery that the life of Ammai was.