The Final Frontier – Dialogues
Between Mother and Son
Author – Dr K L
Chowdhury
Reviewer – Col (Dr) Tej K Tikoo
“The Final Frontier – Dialogues Between Mother and Son” is the latest book
by Dr. K L Chowdhury (Peacock Books, New
Delhi- Feb., 2017, Atlantic Publishers and
Distributors (P) Ltd.). It is an unusual
work comprising 105 poems in the form of dialogues written over a 4-year period
(September 2007 to October 2011). The dialogues take place between a mother,
who is ageing and sick, and her son. What makes them interesting, arresting
and, at times, surreal is the fact that the son is also the doctor of his
mother, who obviously is not just like any another patient for him. She has been
a constant companion, a source of strength and an ocean of love; a mother who
showered her blessings not only on her own children, but on the entire extended
family; a mother who welcomed with open arms everyone that came to her door
step.
But with her ageing and illness, the paradigm of roles and relationships
between mother and son undergoes dramatic transformation as new existential
problems crop up every so often. The mother of a sagely visage, an exemplary
life of nine decades, an institution that exuded love, compassion, strength,
courage and inspiration, is slowly and inexorably nearing her end. The son, a renowned physician with more than five decade experience as a
physician, teacher and researcher, is now the main companion, care giver and
doctor to his mother.
The dialogues capture the irony and agony of the situation wherein the doctor-son
can’t reconcile to the fact that beyond a point a human body, no matter how precious
and dear, must give up the spirit (soul, if you may). Each poem relates to a
specific situation or condition, a mood or a thought process, an introspection
or philosophical reflection. Through the dialogues the author delves deep into
the ethical and spiritual dimensions of life, trying to penetrate the heart of
the riddle which hides within it life’s unsolved mysteries. What also emerge
are the conflicts and hard realities staring him in the face. At one level, his
actions are dictated by the level of his competence as a medical professional
of long standing, tending to a patient afflicted with severe maladies. At
another, he is torn by the pangs of pain that he suffers as a son, seeing his
own mother slipping away, waiting for deliverance. The transformation from
being a doctor issuing instructions to care-givers, into a care-giver himself,
tests the author’s mental, physical and spiritual strengths to their limits.
According to the author, “It transformed me as a doctor, a care- giver and a
human being.”
The opening poem starts with a prayer that expresses motherly love in
words that only a mother can.:
I pray for health and happiness of
my children and my kin
Peace, amity, and prosperity for all
humanity…
As for myself, I ask Yama to take me
while I am hale and hearty
And when it is time for the final
journey
I pray for you to be there to lend
me your shoulder.
When her son finds her in deep contemplation she explains her nostalgia about
Kashmir in graphic terms:
Thinking of Kashmir,
my son,
And all the years we lived there.
Now it looks like a distant dream,
Water down the river…
And when he exhorts her not to burden her mind with the memories of a place
from where they were exiled, she seeks solace in the lap of her
motherland:
Can we forget our roots; can we
sever the spiritual bonds?
Kashmir will always live in us as long as
breath is there;
Her memories are like a mother’s lap
Where you find the ultimate solace.
She goes on to add that memories connect us with the past; that ‘there
can be no present sans one’s past’. She reminds him to consult the almanac (Jantari)
to regulate the day to day activities of life – a fast on Ashtamis, lighting a
lamp on the Amavasya, eating vegetarian on Poornimas, and performing Shraada on
her husband’s anniversary— remarking that such observances are necessary to
break the monotony and to lend life some meaning and colour.
Her compassion is profoundly on display when, while riding a boat on the
Vitasta, she pays the boatman for the entire catch of fish, and asks him to throw
the fish back into the sacred river so that they could continue to live in its
bosom.
The dialogues include some tragic-comic moments too. While she is
irretrievably confined to bed, she experiences nightmares that the son fails to
address. She finally resorts to the age-old remedy of driving away the spirits
by slashing the air in front of her with a knife that she later places under
her pillow before going off to sleep. When the doctor-son dismisses it as a
mere superstition, she innocently explains the logic:
That is what our ancestors did
When the djins and goblins
Teased and terrorized them;
That is what has worked for me.
As time passes by, and prolonged confinement leads to worse
complications, the shadow of death looms large in the son’s mind. But he is lovingly
mentored by the suffering mother:
Everything that goes up has to come
down;
Life that has been lived has one day
to end.
Everything that is born has to
wither away and die;
Life is a chance in a million but
death is a certainty.
However, the sanctity of life is re-emphasized time and again. She
herself proclaims that the Persian aphorism, ‘it is a good bargain to get rid
of a tooth in pain’, cannot be applied to something as precious as life, which
must be ‘nurtured to the very end.’
In an emotionally charged and philosophically rich conversation, the
pain and anguish of the son is mirrored in the dialogues, as aging and decay,
faith and skepticism, and life’s true meaning and the mystery of death become
subjects of deep contemplation.
A turning point occurs when the mother tragically suffers a hip
fracture, immobilizing her completely, rendering her condition more poignant. The
son is overtaken by helplessness and frustration, and, sometimes, a deep sense
of guilt and self-mortification. But the mother, even in her suffering remains
calm and uncomplaining to spare him the agony.
Care-giving now turns into a formidable task – doing up her hair, taking care of the bowels
and bladder, changing the dress, making the bed, stanching the sores and cleaning
up the pus oozing out of the recalcitrant ulcers. The son’s angst reaches the
acme when mother lapses into long periods of silence, speaking not a word for
hours and days on end. One time, when he ponders about the inscrutability of
his mother’s suffering, providence sends succor in the form of a friend’s
visit who tries to comfort him thus:
“Your mother has always been gentle, kind and compassionate.
God has chosen her specially, for only the noblest suffer thus.
Yet, look how blessed she is, for He has also arranged
To post you at her service – her own son, and doctor –
One of the best in town.”
On her ninety-third birthday, while she is in bed and totally unaware of
the event, the son goes into deep reflection as he remembers what his grandfather
had once philosophized about birthdays:
“What is there to celebrate when it is time to cogitate?
Why make such a hullabaloo to beguile ourselves on birthdays
Unless we are happy to have come a year closer to the journey’s end?”
Knowing well what providence has in store, the author soliloquies, “Old
age, sickness and death are great levellers. They respect neither status nor
pedigree; they humble all equally.” But he is so much pained by remorselessness
of ageing and a chronically bedridden existence that he questions the desire of
longevity in humans and even wishes for sudden end for himself when it is time:
O fate,
give me a flash death!
Give me a
heart attack, or a fell stroke!
Give me a
fatal accident, or a lightning bolt!
Pray spare
me the poison cup of longevity.
As the end draws near, mother suffers seizures. The son is shocked by the
terrifying event involving his own mother. He captures the pathos of the
situation thus:
“I have no count of seizures that I have treated all my life;
No count of the times I have given intravenous shots;
But it seemed now as if
I was handling a seizure first time in my life.”
She rallies, but not for long. Nearly three months after the seizure,
“Dharmaraja (the Lord of death), the curer of all the maladies of body, mind
and spirit, took her in his embrace.”
Thus, ends the earthly journey of a noble soul that enriched those whose
lives she touched with her sterling qualities of head and heart.
The last section in the book are an exploration into the sanctity and
sentiment related to the rituals of dying —the cremation, the gathering of
ashes and their immersion and the post-funerary rites. The book, however,
closes with the last poem, the receipt of the death certificate from the
municipality, which appropriately enough brings the curtain down on the life of
saintly person who was like a Chinar tree that shielded her family and others
with a soothing shade all her life.
“Mother, you never got a certificate in life/notwithstanding your many
talents
Nor do I know what use to you / this document from the municipality
For your history does not end with it / nor did it begin with your birth.”
The author, nevertheless, is no wiser in demystifying ‘death’ and
therefore, appropriately closes the book with Bhagvad Gita’s oft quoted verse:
“There never was a time you were not;
There never will be a time you will not be.”
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