The day I decided to change my life

She loved me a lot. She would worry when I came home late from work. If there were a storm in the city, she would fret and pray until I reached home. She did not worry about Pinky or Manish, though they worked longer hours and shouldered more responsibilities.

When I told her about the lump, she went silent. Maybe I should not have mentioned it at all. In much pain, the thrice-weekly visits to the kidney center were taking their toll on her. She had grown weak since we had insisted on the dialysis and her reluctance added to her suffering. She visited me in the hospital after my surgery, combining the visit with her dialysis. That was the last time she smiled at me.

It took a week for my biopsy report to come. She must have died a thousand deaths in those seven days. I read the medical report again, as my eyes were hazy with the tears. I had to tell her. I ran into the living room, sat across on the sofa next to her, and said, “Maa, it is clear.” I was smiling and expected her to jump with joy. She stared at me with glassy unfeeling eyes and said, “Good”. I don’t know if she died that day or a week later when her soul left her body. But in that week, she lived like a ghost, ashen and in deep pain, wailing from the suffering caused by her failing organs. With the sutures on my chest still sore, there was little I could do to make her comfortable before she died.

My mother-in-law was a strong and formidable lady. Often she was hard on me and expected me to be different from who I am. When she died, I lost the one person who protected me from the world and its irrational expectations. Suddenly, I could not be irresponsible anymore. At 41, 21 years after I came into this house, life wanted me to grow up and take charge.

I cannot say that it was on one day that I decided to change my life. It was a gradual process but a conscious and planned one. I decided that my house would now be my office, and I would apply my skills in product marketing here instead of in the industry. Focusing on my family’s well-being, I paid attention to what my father-in-law ate for breakfast and what my husband took to the office for lunch. When his sister Pinky came home late from work, I learned to give her company at dinner. The challenges came every day, and in the process of overcoming them, I changed my life. When Aditya returned from university, he asked, “Mom, you think you can make the bhindi like Maa used to?” Blessed is the family that loves and cares; I made frantic calls to Manish’s married sisters who shared the recipe. For the first time after being married, I became a homemaker.

Six years hence our house is very different. I have brought in my own and have enhanced the haven Maa built us. There are times when I go wrong and there are times I exceed expectation. I have re-joined the industry with work from home deliverables. My priorities are set; I juggle my time between my home, work, and hobbies, happy in the many dimensions that life has brought me.