The man in his blue knee-length hospital gown walked up and down the stairs leading to the ICU, the contraption attached to his nose swaying from left to right in a rhythmic swing. There was barely any space on the landing but we refused to budge from our places near the glass window, lest our mother took her last breath while we waited in the lounge that was on a floor too far removed from the ICU.

It was only a few months ago that she glowed beside her husband who was as handsome as the day she married him fifty five years ago. They were both completely in sync, seated next to each other praying in the traditional Indian way. She knew just when to pass him the firewood for the fire, a thousand messages conveyed without a single exchange of words over the raging fire.

She sent a silent message to her second son who was on his way to meet her but she couldn’t hang on anymore. He was only a city away; his flight had just landed in Bombay but his call to us coincided with her departure. It happened in a flash – a sip of water; a cheeky smile; a brave struggle as she pushed the mask away for a freedom that was liberating – a quick succession of moves that freed her from her struggling body.

She had made a beautiful bride in her pink salwar kameez and gentle face, a Delhi girl who had come to Chennai at the age of eighteen, not knowing what to expect from wedded life. It was a place where she lived until the end of her days, with uncles-in-law and aunts-in-law, sisters-in-law and their husbands, nieces and nephews. Married to a man she’d barely spoken to and into a family she hardly knew, she found herself amidst complete strangers. Their families had arranged the match and the first time they saw each other was on the day they exchanged their vows. Our father, who was dejected because of the recent ordeal of losing his business to another man, was pleasantly surprised with his beautiful bride. He couldn’t believe his good fortune and never ever stopped thanking God for his charming bride. Fifty-five years later, it was hard to believe that the motionless person in the casket was his vibrant bride. This was the spunky young girl who used to climb over the padlocked gate with her husband and his sisters to watch late night shows, dodging her strict father-in- law. She even managed to cross the hurdle of breast cancer. It was as though she had been given a five-year lease on life, thanks to our brother and sister-in-law in England who tended her back to health.

In the summer months when we visited Chennai, her favourite pastimes were pampering her grandchildren with their favourite foods and desserts; lounging in the armchair watching a Zee soap opera with Indian women dressed to the hilt espousing traditions that are alien even to an average contemporary Indian; or sitting at the dining table bent over her Sudoku puzzle that she would solve in record time; or playing a game of solitaire as though her life depended on it. It never crossed our minds that that summer would be the last time we would witness these familiar sights of her.

None of us in the family expected her to succumb to cancer. It was shocking to find out that it was so far gone that she only had a few months to live – two, four or at the most six if she was lucky. We wondered whether we should share this devastating news with her as it would definitely crush her spirit to live. In our naivety, we didn’t realize that she was not one to be fooled. The choice wasn’t ours really. When the doctor was examining her chest x-ray, muttering to himself that it could be pneumonia or TB, she completed his string of words by predicting that it was cancer. She knew with a great sense of clarity that her time had come. In fact, she had known this for some time but made light of it. That summer, her conversation was punctuated with statements like “When I’m not around ...” I brushed these comments aside, refusing to take them seriously. Although my brother feared that she wouldn’t last long and told me so that summer, as though sharing his inner fears would make it all go away.

She was amazing. We would return from school and find her bent over an iron in Feynman fashion, with the parts scattered all over the dining table. It made us wonder whether our mum was in fact an ordinary housewife or an engineer who had completely missed her vocation. And then the carrot halwa would appear from the kitchen and we would forget all about our fleeting doubts. Her culinary skills were unparalleled, how could we have thought otherwise! She made the most amazing laddoos that came to be known as her famous “sand pies”. They were meant to be a cure all – there was nothing that the sand pies couldn’t cure, whether it was lethargy, aches and pains, or girlfriend problems. From my brother’s IIT classmates to my nephews, all of them vouch for the magical powers of her sand pies!

Chemotherapy was definitely not a cure all, especially in her opinion. She firmly believed that it would ruin her quality of life and she was speaking from past experience. She feared her white blood cell count would drop and weaken her immune system beyond repair. But the doctors convinced her otherwise by telling that medical science had advanced and there were many alternative drugs that had been discovered in recent times. Succumbing to family pressure and the advice of her doctors, she bravely put herself through it another time and suffered the consequences. The only mercy was that it hastened the end and released her from many months of suffering. She found herself in ICU with pneumonia, seizures and laboured breathing, with all of us standing around her helplessly and waiting for the inevitable. The next morning she requested that her husband be brought to the ICU to fulfill her final wish of having “sindoor” applied on her forehead as a sign of her marital status. According to Hindu tradition, the greatest blessing of all is to die a married woman. This simple request while we were half way through our breakfast was enough to make us choke on our food. Food appeared mysteriously on the table that was pushed against the balcony doors to make room for the mourners in the quaint little apartment where my parents lived. The aroma wafted into the bedrooms and every corner of the house but we merely went through the motion of eating. It tasted like sawdust even though it was the most amazing spread of food that I’d seen in a long time. According to tradition, food is not cooked until the fourth day in a house that has suffered the loss of a family member. Our relatives had worked out a roster and sent us enough food to last us a lifetime.

But nothing lasts a lifetime – the warmth of her hug, the security of her lap, the balm of her smile. The infectious smile would burst out in no time, a smile that was hard to resist. She would often laugh while talking and her words would roll into laughter, making it hard to decipher her speech. Whether it was laughter over her grandson’s retort who refused to accept her bribe of one rupee for a life time commitment of looking after her in her old age or at our father’s absentmindedness when he walked into our neighbour’s home thinking it was his own – it was extremely contagious.

The laughter didn’t leave her even when she was in ICU, breathing her last. On the pretext of having a sip of water, she bravely got rid of her oxygen mask, much to my brother’s amazement. The smile froze on her face and remained there until the end. It was almost as though she was smiling patiently at our tears, smiling in appreciation of the flowers, even smiling at the choice of sari that we draped on her – a silk in pink and gold, her favourite colours. It brought out the colour in her cheeks even in death.

The charming lady in pink and her handsome husband were exact opposites: he was intense and passionate while she was good-humoured and calm. She accompanied him on all his social commitments whether or not she felt up to it. She got along with most people, didn’t expect or demand too much from anybody and tolerated even the most annoying of people – the obnoxious neigbour who constantly complained about us; the newly married lady who was forever helping herself to food from our home because she was too lazy to cook; or the pesky visitors who asked far too many questions. She was never too tired for anybody or anything.

But she did look tired of late. The shopping spree to buy footwear and handbags at the newest shopping mall in Chennai was fun. She laughed at my attempts to play salesgirl, slipping on sandals onto her tired feet. She enjoyed every moment of my father’s 80th birthday celebrations but her feet were badly swollen by the end of the night and her smile a bit lopsided with tiredness. She was full of energy on the morning of her granddaughter’s wedding, helping my dad perform the wedding rites by passing him the right thing even before he could ask for it. Those few days in England were glorious – seeing them at their grand daughter’s wedding, their happiness reflected in their smiles. Sitting beside my mother at the wedding lunch, I never thought it would be the last time that we’d be seated next to each other, struggling over the spinach pie that kept crumbling into tiny pieces. There was no question of her spirit crumbling even though she was so much in pain. It was odd to see her in ICU against the stark white sheets and tubes running all over the place. She asked for her children even though she didn’t have the energy to talk, signalling to us with her fingers. She had complete clarity that she was not going to survive and had personal messages for each one of us. My brother drove me to hospital at break-neck speed and when I eventually found myself beside her, she wrote me a special message on my palm although she could barely move her fingers. That message is etched in my hand and my mind in permanent ink, non-erasable and bold. It broke my heart to see her in this state but made me proud to see her face death with such grace and dignity.

She lay motionless as we covered her with jasmine flowers and ghee to the chanting Sanskrit hymns. We were all trying to hold on to something that wasn’t there – the touch, the laughter, the gentle smile. We had to let her go, have one last glimpse of the familiar face, a face that we would miss for the rest of our lives. It was heart-wrenching to see her frame disappear into the huge chamber of fire, the escaping smoke from the chimney, the final sight of what was our mother.

Wasn’t it only recently that she went rushing to her eldest son’s rescue when he had a fainting spell in the midst of his exam? she was extremely proud of his photographic memory. And was it not some time back that she waited eagerly for a phone call from her son who was far away in England? And was it not yesterday that she worried about her youngest son who was so much like her in temperament? Was it not just today that she asked me whether she could donate her kidney to her granddaughter or her cochlea to her grandson to help them through their medical problems!

Even the weather protested in sympathy. A storm had hit Chennai and the streets had taken a beating. Trees had been knocked around and fallen across the flooded streets. Abandoned cars bobbed up and down the streets, while we tried to push our car out of the flood waters onto dry land. We pushed and laughed at our plight, forgetting for a minute that we were as ravaged as the city where she spent the better part of her life. We summed up all our energy and tried to lift my brother’s car out of the ditch into which we had inadvertently pushed it. But our effort was as futile as our attempt at lightheartedness.

These were the streets that she knew better than the back of her hand. She had a keen sense of direction and was my dad’s A to Z when they traveled around Chennai. She drove us to school when we were kids and to wherever we needed to go. She was among the first females among my dad’s relatives who had learnt to drive and would zip us around town, rain or shine. The sight of her in her oversized, oval- shaped sun glasses at the end of the school day was enough to dissipate our tiredness. She would stand at the gate, ready to transport us to the comfort of our home and evening tea.

An urn was what we were left with. We walked her down the beach for the last time, holding the urn close to our hearts. The priest unveiled it so we could pay our last respects to what used to be our mother, reduced to dust and ashes. We filled the urn with rose petals and watched as the ashes were scattered over the rising waves and sucked into the depths of the sea. The rose petals bobbed up in splashes of red and pink like unforgettable memories that will never be submerged.