Derivation of Life

By Viraj J. Mahajan

Archana always wanted to provide a perfect life for her family but the course of her life takes a drastic turn when she has her second child.

Will her family have the same life ever again?

Set in the early 90’s of Ujjain, Derivation of Life throws a light on a middle class family and their quest to find happiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Notion Press
• Release date: Aug 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9789384391997

Book preview

41

1.

When the sky was turning indigo my mother killed herself. In spite of having few grey hair and big black hollow eyes she was very young at that hour, with closed eyes and opened arms she looked very beautiful. The red color sari on her body was little loose from both ends but still it covered her and enhanced her beauty. The lights in the bedroom were dim and the window doors were howling by the November winds. All of this was speaking of her presence, not in the remains but in that soothing wind, in that dim light. Along with my father I stood there in the corner and saw her resting body. For the first time in the past twenty years she seemed calm and alive. The room was decorated with many things, one mahogany color bed with blue bed sheet all over it which had designs of people painted in red color sitting on camels and on which my mother’s body was calmly resting. In the corner there was one dressing table which had full length mirror mounted on it, my mother used to knot her long black hair sitting right there in front of it. The walls had the pictures of her deities which she daily worshipped. Left side of their room opened to one balcony where my mother used to make me sit on her laps and plucked all the leeches from my hair with her ultrathin comb. That balcony was lit by the Diwali decorated lightings which were put up by my father, my mother told him many a times to put them down but he used to forget about it every evening and that night those lights created altogether a different aura.

This unexpected event left my father to shiver in pain and he found himself sitting next to her. I know my father very well. He just sat there and looked at her. He knew that calling any sort of medical assistance was out of the question as we both knew by that time that she was dead. He kept his heavy hands on her forehead and started to pat it like he was helping her to fall asleep. He was sad but I was not, for me it was not unexpected. I always knew that she has dragged her life course and one day or the other she will leave us for her own good. I knew that if my mother took this step of dying then there must be some reason, some good old reason which I will understand with time. The night lamp was emitting a yellow light on her face and it glowed in the dark. On the dressing table there laid the thing which gave my mother her last breath, her final breath: a small cylindrical box of sleeping pills. And I was, till date clueless as to why she chose me to buy those medicines for her.

People die. They leave us for something good. We don’t understand this at that time but as we grow old and start walking in their shoes we understand them and understand that giving away their hope of living was the best thing which they could do. Suicide is not an act of cowardly; it requires a lot of guts. A low hearted man can never end his life. My mother was not a weak person. She was and will remain the strongest person I ever knew and had the privilege to meet and this is her story, collection of some random unforgettable events which happened with her in this short life. This story of her is a word to future me to understand her a little better and in a hope that one day I will realize that she really loved us and that she wanted to free herself from the pain and the longing.

If it’s at all true in some world, maybe a world of fiction wherein it is believed that at our last moments we get to see our whole life in one flash, I ask to myself what my mother saw? What was the first image which came to her eyes as her soul was finally releasing? Who was that face which brought a smile to her face in that dying moment? And what was that memory which became the cause of those pearly shaped tears which lingered onto her face? Oh! What a purest fiction ever told by anyone and for it to be real, one will have to feel it.

Every story has its beginning and its end. My mother killing herself is the end of the story, but beginning of it is a question. If one pens this story from her childhood then it will become a story of that young village girl which I never knew her like. When I saw her for the first time, I was 10 minutes old and was trying to quietly rest myself next to her. I believe it to be the bright sunrays of Friday morning that ached my eyes but I managed to open them after few blinks and there she was, lying next to me, covered in that white blanket provided by the hospital. I lived inside her. I took breath with her. Her heart and mine were in synchronization and on that bright day we saw each other for the first time. Her eyes glued to mine and we both passed our first smile to each other. It was a relation which was written long ago. I started playing with my little fingers and she laughed. Suddenly I felt some white flash which obscured my vision. I was unable to move my head to look at the source of it. I guess she sensed it and she helped me to turn my head and for the first time I saw my father clicking our pictures with his Kodak. I don’t remember all this but when I grew up and started to fascinate the digital camera, my mother told me about this time.

With me, she was born too. The mother in that village girl took her first breath when she turned to look at me in that hospital wing.

‘He looks like you’, Archana said. She looked towards her husband Vijay who was busy clicking the pictures of his wife and his new born son. Vijay wore his usual clothes that day, blue cotton shirt with black pants. His moustache was neatly cut but his hairs were little disheveled. He was half asleep in the morning when Archana patted on his back and said ‘I think my water broke.’

And it took him one entire moment to realize what she meant. He helped her to come down from their bedroom and in no time they were on their way to the hospital in the auto rickshaw which Vijay’s father, Mohan Gupta called.

Vijay kept the camera on the adjacent table to Archana’s bed, sat next to her and caressed her hand. There was a shining on her face, some different water was running all over her and he knew that it was the best moment for both of them. He lifted his son in his arms. His skin felt like a soft cushion and he smelled like fresh milk. Vijay planted a kiss on his son’s forehead. The child in his arms was still busy in playing with his tiny fingers. His little black hairs were shining and as Vijay touched them his son looked at him for the first time. As their eyes met, Vijay realized that he has finally become a father.

‘Arjun’, Vijay whispered in his son’s ear.

Archana looked at him with little confusion like asking him to clear as to what he said. Vijay touched his son’s nose and rubbed it with his own and said, ‘We will call him Arjun, do you like it?’

Over the past few months Vijay and Archana were arguing over the child’s name. Salman Khan’s Maine Pyar Kiya was still running in the nearby theater and Vijay loved the movie so much that he watched it for more than ten times and he wanted the child’s name to be either Prem or Suman based on the names of the characters from the movie but Archana was totally against it. She loved the names which Vijay suggested but she was not sure to call her own kid either Prem or Suman, somehow she couldn’t relate with them. She knew that her husband was bad in selecting names. So she never agreed on her husband’s choice of names but at the same time she didn’t object it. Vijay, who had altogether different tune in mind started to refer his child as Prem or sometimes as Suman.

‘Arjun? But you wanted our child’s name to be Prem? She asked.

‘I know, but when I lifted him in my arms and he looked at me, it suddenly felt like that he and I are interconnected by some imaginary strings and his eyes are as sharp as Arjuna, so do you like the name Arjun?’ he asked.

For a second Archana couldn’t control herself from looking at her husband. How much he loved her and understood her was still a mystery to her and he knew that Arjuna was her favorite character from the epic Hindu book and he namesake their son from it. She just smiled and nodded her head. She was a blessed mother that day and he was a proud father.

2.

‘Vijay, our sarpanch, Mahendra Babu is here to see you. When you are finished with writing that memo to

the collector come outside and have a word with him’, said

Mr. Deshpande in his monotonous tone, he has been working in this office much before Vijay joined in and had helped Vijay in the start days at this office to get acquainted. He was like an elder brother to Vijay which he never had.

Vijay was sitting in his office and had a pile of files around him. The government building was bad in shape. It was not even properly cleaned from the past six years but for Vijay it was like a second home. There was a window behind Vijay’s desk which opened to a massive ground. There was one huge banyan tree stood in the middle. It was spread laterally. The roots were thick, woody and old and the leaves were elliptical. Someone from the village had tied a swing made of one old bike tire on one of its branch and whenever Vijay gets tired from his work, he used to look at that swing. Sometimes kids from the village play there and just their happy and excited faces made him happy and all energetic. Their sight gave him that relief which the four walls and the dusty, noisy fan in his office never gave it to him.

‘Mahendra Babu? What he needs from me?’ Vijay asked.

‘I have no idea but I can tell you one thing, I have never seen him this stressed. You should come outside and talk to him’, Mr. Deshpande said.

Vijay closed the files he was working on and adjusted his shirt and combed his hair by his hands. The sarpanch of their village was here, he had to look decent.

Mahendra Babu was in his late twenties and had a black moustache which was curved from the corners. He always used to wear a turban which he carried on as an heir exactly like the designation of the sarpanch. He always looked like a man who knows what he was doing. Nobody in the village ever doubted him. They knew whatever he will be doing it will be for their progress. He never went to any school but he knew everything which made the people in his village happy and their smile was his wage. He made it easier for all those farmers who needed a loan to buy their own tractors. Last year, when the Chief Minister came, Mahendra Babu gave a very remarkable speech about the importance of girl education and after a month the state government approved a place and a decent amount to open a girl’s school. He was a man full of life but when Vijay saw him that day, all the spark, all the smile was drained out.

‘Mahendra Babu, why did you bother to come? You should have called me’, Vijay said.

‘There was no time, Vijay. I am in a big problem and I need your help’, Mahendra Babu replied.

They both came outside. Sun was on the top of their heads and the air was dry. They both walked towards the office canteen and sat down on the plastic chairs facing each other. Mahendra Babu ordered two teas.

‘Vijay, did you hear about the government’s new rule about the village sarpanch?’ Mahendra Babu asked.

Vijay got the idea about Mahendra Babu’s unexpected visit. The state government had passed a new ordinance that after the death of the sarpanch his son is not allowed to take up his position and if he wants to then he will have to clear the new formulated exams and only then he will be appointed as the sarpanch.

‘Yes, Mahendra Babu. I have heard about it.’

‘The government officials has sent me a legal notice to withdraw from my position as a sarpanch and if I want to regain my position then I will have to give the required exams but you know that I never went to any school. How am I supposed to give the exams?’

‘You can ask for some time from them. They will give it to you. Meanwhile you can prepare for the exam and we all know that you will clear it. You know everything about the village and