Love You, Mom

On the hottest day of this planet i.e., 21st June, it was the seventh birthday of my darling cousin, Shine. The ecstasy could be felt from the birthday eve. Whispers and tête-à-têtes about the party had been going on from a month before. On the birthday eve, I, Peter, called Shine and asked about the arrangements.

Peter: How are you, the dearest?
Shine: I am fine, Bro. How about you?
Peter: What’s the plan then?
Shine: A birthday cake from “Taste Buds”, games with friends, dance, a clown-show and some utterly delicious snacks.
Peter: It seems routine, but ecstasy lies in meeting you and not in anything else. So it’s going to be the seventh year of the alien on the globe!
Shine: Yeah! But these seven years have been a boon for the planet than the nineteen years of the dinosaur I am talking to. Where is my junior? Give him the phone.

I just gave the phone to my five years old cripple brother, Boon.

Boon: Hello, Sis! How are you?
Shine: Hey, Cutie Pie! I have kept a load of presents for you. Come as early as possible. I want to meet you. I miss you!
Boon: I am sure to meet you tomorrow. Bye.
Shine: Bye! Muah! My teddy!

Since we don’t have a real sister and Shine is deprived of the joy of having a real brother, the bond between the threesome is just unbreakable.
And then our mom arrived. We don’t have our father now. He had left us three years back.

Being the apple of everyone’s eye in our family and especially that of our mother’s, every single minute of our mother was (and even now is) for Boon. From inside I knew that Mom used to give even my share of care to Boon so as to not to make him realize his weakness, but I was accustomed to come to terms with this sacrifice of sorts. Boon being an ‘arrogant without-any-reason’ kid, used to get suffocated by the affinity.

“Oh, my love! I missed you a lot,” said Mom as she entered the house. “How are you? Have you eaten your lunch?” she asked.
“Don’t be so dramatic, Mom! Bro takes enough care of me,” said Boon reluctantly.
“But not as good as Mom does. So be a little graceful, chap,” I said.
“Oh! Don’t scold him, Peter. He is our angel,” Mom protected Boon.
“Whatever!” said Boon.
“You will pay for it,” I sighed.

After that we sat to have our dinner in which there was the regular mushroom soup before the main-course like everyday because it is Boon’s favourite but I hate it like anything. I always crave for sweet-corn soup but that has never got written on the menu for the reason well-understood. And finally the ‘D-Day’, from both the perspectives, arrived. Mom left for the market in the morning to buy a gift for Shine. We live in a village locality, so have to take a bus to the town.

“I’ll come in the afternoon. Together we will go to the party,” said Mom.
“Please be in time,” said Boon with an awkward smile.
“As you say, my angel. Take care!’’ she said and bade the final bye.

We often take the unconditional love of our elders for granted. It’s a human tendency; ‘never care for what is every time here’. So was the case of Boon. The pre-decided time of Mom’s return was of 2 p.m. Since it was the enigma of the party flowing in me, I forgot that it’s going to be a bus-strike after 12 p.m.

Mom called me at 12:30 p.m.

I: Hello!
Mom: Dear! It’s a strike. A bus-strike!
I: Oh, Mom! Sorry I forgot to tell you, it was written on the notice board yesterday.
Mom: I feel I won’t be able to reach in time. I just call Jack; he’ll drop you to your uncle’s house. What’s Boon doing?
I: He is packing his clothes. He wants to stay with Shine for some days.
Mom: What a crap! He can’t! He hasn’t lived without me for once even! You know, Peter, he can’t walk without his crutches.
I: What new things you have told me. You should explain him rather than wasting time on me. I just gave my phone to Boon.
Boon: Where are you, Mom?
Mom: I will accompany you in the party now but you are not going to stay without me or your brother.
Boon: I can, Mom (angrily).
Mom: No, you won’t! It’ll be difficult for you. Boon! When you are able to walk, I will send you.
Boon: This is not fair, Mom! I wish you would have cured it in time. I am taking my clothes along with me. Bye!
I: Don’t worry, Mom! I have my hands and legs completely fine.
Mom: Don’t hit him for any reason. Bye!

Boon wasn’t a handicap by birth. Actually he had got slipped off from my hands when he was some months old. Ever since then, Mom’s ‘love-order’ for both her sons has been the reverse of their chronological-order. Mom everyday gives Boon massage of a very expensive oil, for which she has to work three hours more in the office. Everyday, she goes to drop him to his school and I have to bring him home, waiting for thirty minutes more after my session ends.

And finally, Jack, our neighbour, arrived. We sat in his UFO like old car and the distance which is covered in an hour, was covered in two hours and eleven minutes; exactly.
We reached at the destination at around 3: 30 p.m.

Jack: How was the safari, guys?
Boon: The best ever. I wish I could enjoy it more. (In a sarcastic way)

I just thanked Jack. As expected, Shine was standing out at the entrance and we just relived the nostalgia in some seconds with a group hug and then Shine’s mom and dad received us by saying that we were not guests but family so three of us had to help the folks in making the arrangements. Boon had been given the duty of blowing balloons, I had to get the house decorated and Shine was supposed to keep a check on everyone as it was her day. Her mom
was preparing the cuisine while her father was making arrangements of the cake and return-gifts for the kids. Of course! Boon was the apple of everyone’s eye but on that day the attention he was getting was lesser than how much he usually got.

All the friends of Shine came and she got busy with them and he was sitting alone on a chair with some blown balloons around him. He could feel the pain of being alone. He was being taken as a victim of sympathy by everyone because of his inability. Mom never let him realize his weakness. She used to play with him and his friends, make him look gentle by getting him new dresses in between very short intervals, giving him daily massage of the a fore mentioned expensive oil and of course, by calling him Angel. Now being alone and unrecognized, his chutzpah was cracking from inside and I was watching him standing at a corner, because, in my heart, popped up a notion that he is going to learn the value of Mom today.

After the decoration, I was supposed to go to the market nearby and bring some ice cream for everyone. I went and just as I came back, something, that shouldn’t have happened, had happened; the antagonist of this story and Boon’s foe, Andrew, had come. This guy is a classmate of Shine and doesn’t like Boon because of his inability and some egoistic issues.

Andrew is the son of Mom’s boss, but unlike her other co-workers, she has always given more attention to her son than the son of her boss. Even when it was the birthday party of Boon, Andrew and his father had come but she was with Boon in each second passing by.

Now seeing that Boon is sitting alone, Andrew went near to him and said in a biting tone, “Hello! Mama’s boy.” and he replied, “Hello! mom-less boy.”

Andrew smacked him away and ran away in the garden. I got to know all about this as I came back and what I could see in Boon’s eyes was the pain of Mom’s absence as she would have never let it happen in her presence. I just gave him some sympathy and even after knowing that he’s feeling low, I pretended to be unaware and left him alone because I wanted him to learn the lesson.

Mom hadn’t arrived so far. I called her and she said that it would still take forty to forty-five minutes for her to reach. Taking the advantage of the situation, I just made an announcement that the cake was going to be cut. It is our family’s custom that the cake has to be cut by Boon irrespective of the fact that who was born on that day of any bygone year.

I just told Shine to dramatize and to not to let him cut the cake and this time, she would make Andrew do this. I did this to intensify the twinge of Boon for the obvious reason that it would let him crave for Mom, even more. Shine understood and she did the same. Now there was an agony in the eyes of Boon and he was about to cry because the pillar of his pride was missing. He was sitting composed but I could feel the heat of eruptions in him.

He just ignored his snacks and started faking as if he was not hungry. Then everyone sat around the big dining table for the dinner. Shine’s Mom served everyone but she didn’t notice that Boon was missing from the table as he was sitting on a chair at a corner of the room.

She went to him and said, “Come Chap! Have your dinner.”
Boon said, “No, Aunt! I don’t have appetite.”

Shine’s mom thought that Andrew was the reason of this behaviour of him and she brought the dinner near him. She was forcing him to have a spoonful of sweet corn soup and he was consistently denying the offerings.
Shine’s mom: Come on! You’ll have to have it.
Boon: No, Aunt! Please!

And then some magical words resonated which brought a gigantic relief to Boon and an ecstatic smile on his face.
The words were “Oh stop! He doesn’t like it. I just make some mushroom soup for him”.

Yeah! The words were of our mom of course and as Mom came closer to Boon, he hugged her instantly which was a surprise for her. He wasn’t leaving her and in the meanwhile I could see a glance of ecstasy on Mom’s face that was never possible on this planet and especially nor was the reason behind it. Mom looked at me holding Boon and I just winked.
Mom understood that the audacity of Boon had come to an end. “LOVE YOU, MOM. LOVE YOU MOM,” he was stammering and crying to which mom was replying, “LOVE YOU, ANGEL.”

Together we had dinner and left for our home. But the story didn’t end here. After a week, the milieu of our home was the same. Again Mom was pampering him and he had returned to his ignorance.
It has been a year now and today is 20th June.
I hope for the incident to repeat tomorrow.

–END–

“Love You, Mom” is my maiden attempt in the art of writing short-stories. It is a fiction-cum-reality short-saga which deals with the emotions of a child who still is a ‘man-of-few-words’ but his eyes are enough to express his feelings, to show his ecstasy, anger, misery and fun to the narrator. The real story in this story starts and ends up in a birthday party. And yes! It’s about the protagonist and his mother only.