She is waiting at the station

My mother lives in our paternal home in Dhanmondi, which I left in 1997 after staying there for five years, and moved to Gulshan. So after these many years spending a night with her just me and her under the same roof, leaving my wife alone in Gulshan was only a distant probability, a long shot the bookies would say. But fortuitous circumstances have a curious way of making their appearance at the most unlikely times. This happened the other day when my sister and her family who share separate apartments in the same house were going off on a short trip to Sylhet. Our mother would be all alone in the old house and her blood pressure was acting up lately so my sister rang me at the office and in a beseeching tone urged me to spend the following two nights with my mother while she and her family were away. Well, the wife and I were invited to our Beyain's the following night and the evening after we were planning to get ourselves invited to a friend's house an Eid reunion of sorts but I thought my sister needed a break and I could rearrange the socialization to spend some quality time with my Mom. My mind was made up but I told my sister I would get back to her in an hour. I needed the time to plead with my wife and my Beyain. Shortly, to my sister's delight, I confirmed all was okay and she could be off then called my Mom to tell her that I would be staying two nights only nights as the days would be occupied at the office and the evenings with the wife. So actually all I would be doing was go to her place late in the evening sleep and leave very early in the mornings. But my Mom was delighted. I could hear it in her voice. She wanted me to have dinner with her, but I begged off saying I'd be dining with the wife.
The following day was hectic at the office but I kept reminding myself to return home early, finish a quick dinner and be with my Mom by 8 p.m. When my Mom called at the office at 2 p.m., I told her my plans. She insisted that I have dinner with her. She said my sister had cooked koi maachher dolma, one of my favourites. I mumbled an apology. As it always happens, things got late at the office, I rushed home, had a quick dinner with Eva, packed an overnight bag and hurriedly drove down to Dhanmondi. By the time I rang the bell at my mother's door it was 9:20 p.m. My Mom came to the veranda and walked the dozen steps to unbolt the screen door. That's when I noticed her unsteady gait, the feeble movement. There was a lump in my throat. I averted my eyes, they were teary. I felt embarrassed, was tongue tied and followed Amma to the living room. She was bright-eyed, sprightly but slightly bowed over. I think that was the moment the realization dawned on me that in a couple of months she would be hitting 80 and she no longer was the strong willed, uncompromising, zesty, powerhouse of a woman that she was aged 44 when she was widowed way back in 1975. I was 24 then, just waiting for my appointment letter from a top multinational company, when my father, only 55 and just retired from the army, suddenly died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage in this very house. The eldest amongst three siblings, I sort of stepped up to take charge, my sister was five years younger to me and my brother seven years younger, she in Eden College and he at Adamjee Cantonment School.
The journey since then has been an adventure masterminded by my Mom. She is an embodiment of the principle that a strong determined mother infuses steely determination and builds character in her progeny. It was her rock-steady hand that guided the fatherless, rudderless family through the vicissitudes of life in the newly emerging Bangladesh. She taught not only her children but her grandchildren to navigate the ship of life three of her grandchildren have become barristers, one an electrical engineer and another a liberal arts graduate from world class British and American institutions - through her financial, moral and ethical support.
A simple woman with no higher education, she is deeply religious. She performed Hajj in the year 1982 with her brother, has been a devout Muslim and has done wonderful charitable work. The school she built in our ancestral home in Sherpur district on over three acres of land with a two-storey pucca structure bears our father's name. It has become difficult to run due to financial constraints and is in the process of being handed over to a high profile NGO. She says she cannot rest till the transition is complete and she sees the institution get a new lease of life, to be established in perpetuity to render good service to the people of her husband's land the land which became her adopted home in the Garo Hills bordering India where she went as a teenage bride over sixty years ago.
I can still vividly recall, just when I turned a teenager in the early sixties, how my mother made the sacrifices, how the family as a whole under her guidance united to build our Dhanmondi house. How she literally did so brick by brick with great enthusiasm going to the various ghats in the Sadarghat area to buy the rods, cement, sand and bricks and ride the cabs of those old rickety Chevrolet and Bedford trucks and bring the stuff to the construction site. This very house, in the first decade of the 21st century, provided the financial impetus to put her grandchildren through world class educational institutions.
She is given to saying her life's work is done, that her suitcases are packed and she is waiting at the station, calm and composed for the train of life to take her to her eternal destination. She has all the papers ready, yes, all permission in hand put away with our knowledge, in an old battered briefcase that belonged to her late husband the actual piece of paper from the Cantonment Board that grants us sanction to bury her in her husband's grave (my father, a retired major in the army medical corps, passed away in 1975) where she will rest in eternal peace when the time comes - in the embrace of the man with whom she shared her earthly existence for barely twenty five years. She embodies the old adage, "Give me a good mother and I will give you a good nation".
She was not happy to see me rush in late that night, tired and immediately go off to bed without having dinner with her, which she was looking forward to. She had herself strung the mosquito net on the bed in the room which had been our bridal suite thirty three years ago and more recently of her two grandsons. Next morning in the soft glow dawn, she lay demurely on her bed while I tried unsuccessfully to check her blood pressure. The sphygmomanometer malfunctioned. We made small talk and I looked at her calm and serene face and thought as she looked on tenderly at me that she could be forgiven for saying to herself - "This stranger, my son ?".
She is in good health, though her unflinching grip on life has slackened a little. She is "the lioness in winter" and I pray she be with us by Allah's Grace for many more glorious years to come the stuff of legend.

Tanveerul Haque loves travel and books and is a member of The Reading Circle. He can be reached at [email protected]