Celebrating Life

Today is Pink Ribbon day. This day is dedicated to those suffering from breast cancer. In May, this year, I lost my maternal aunt to metastasis from breast cancer. She was one of the liveliest persons I had met in this lifetime and this article is dedicated to her.

Celebrating Life


It was the first day of the MA class. Swati entered the class late, and hurried to her seat when she was greeted by a bindi and salwar-kameez clad lady, around fifty years old of age, with a gentle smile.
“Ma’am – I am sorry to be late – it won’t happen again”, she said and the rest of the class burst into laughter.
In her confusion, she started apologizing further and the other students roared with laughter. Till someone explained to her that this fifty year old lady was not the teacher but just a student like her. And this lady went ahead and introduced the rest of the class to her.
She happened to be my mother’s sister. Jhumamashi, I used to call her. My first memory of Jhumamashi was as a four year old when I would snuggle on top of her while she slept. As a seven year old, I lost my mother and Jhumamashi, wanted to take me with her to Delhi and rear me up like a mother. Small things like wishing me on my birthday every year, remembering that I loved shammi kebabs and hence ensuring that I had a plateful the first thing whenever I landed in Delhi, gifting me my first watch, my first camera made Jhumamashi my favorite relative.
Jhumamashi was very attractive, of medium height, with a lilting voice that carried a lot of warmth, never without makeup and loved to dress up well. Her husband was very well established and she had always a fleet of cars and a posse of servants at her disposal. After spending some twenty years of her life post marriage in rearing up her two children, she decided to further her career goals that had got paused with worldly responsibilities.
She became very popular in her class and was called Mommie Angel by her fellow classmates, all of whom happened to be younger than her by at least twenty years. I had taken up a job in Delhi when she told me that she has entered college and I asked her “Why?”
She answered “Why not?”
In 2003, she was diagnosed with a tumor in her left breast but the tumor was arrested with mastectomy. Or so it seemed. But that did not deter her from completing her studies and then joining the staff of a college as a teacher in psychology. It was a matter of days before because of her positive demeanor, became very popular with her students. Whenever she would enter class, the class would gravitate around her while she would regale them with interesting stories.
After some years, I moved to Hyderabad and started seeing less of her. Still she ensured I had my plateful of shammi kebabs whenever I visited her and would still give me a call on my birthday. Our communication was mostly through jokes forwarded via SMS. In the meantime, her son grew up and left home and her daughter entered high school.
In 2009, her daughter completed her schooling and moved out to medical college. Before that, Jhumamashi went to Goa with her daughter and her daughter’s friends and they had a great time. The child in her was always smiling, always eager for a little adventure.
However around the same time, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In an article titled “Buddi, don’t give up”, she wrote “Just when all the kids left and I have all this time to do so much ... I don't know what test God is putting me through ... I will fight this cancer”. She told me “What doesn’t break you makes you stronger – don’t you make that sad face”.
While most of us knew of her terminal illness, she did not tell her daughter, saying “She needs to concentrate on her studies. I want to live to see her become a great doctor one day and who knows, she might cure me”.
She would be always cracking a joke and used to collect jokes on her cellphone to keep them handy to cheer people up. “I would be the first mother in law in India to share dirty jokes with my son’s wife,” she would tell me.
Her chemotherapy sessions started in late December and she lost all her hair. Her daughter, who used to call her almost every day, sometimes did not get through when she was busy in the chemotherapy sessions and used to tell her “Momma, you are so busy with your teaching that you don’t have time for me”. She replied “Darling, I am sorry but you will understand one day”.
She continued to teach and help her students with their assignments. “Give a little bit more”, she would tell them. Whenever I would visit her, she would be deep in a stack of student assignments.
I visited her in January 2010 and she was sporting a very stylish wig and she laughed and told me “See – my new hair – people ask me ‘did you change your hairstyle’ and I tell them ‘yeah’.”
“At least now I have more hair”, she laughed.
She had watched “Three Idiots” and wanted to discuss it rather than discuss her illness and I let her have her own way. She didn’t like the shoes I was wearing and rushed me to a shoe shop and insisted I buy a new set. She was panting on the way back and she suddenly said that the chemotherapy sessions are very painful but then assured me she would be fine soon. She called up my son, aged eight, and told him “Come to Delhi – we would have golgappas together.”
She ensured I had my plateful of shammi kebabs before I left.
In April, she messaged me “It has spread to the lungs – please pray for me”. Her lilting voice had become a rasp but she helped her sister-in-law with her housewarming party and still kept sending the jokes. However she stopped going to college.
She was admitted to hospital in late April. First, she would lift her hands and smile, and then she would only lift her hands. In early May, my uncle, her husband, called me and said she has been brought back from the hospital as doctors have given up.
She died in mid-May 2010, survived by her husband, her son and her college going daughter. I was amazed to see the sea of well-wishers- her students, her fellow teachers, her classmates and sundry others.
Perhaps God needed her more in some other place.