Sometimes Clichés Are So Untrue

I remember once while writing something, I used a clichéd sentence. I followed the sentence with another adage: clichés are oft repeated truths. The latter sentence was me at my defensive best. I have done this several times while talking to people, comforting people, reassuring people, I have used my own fair share of clichés. Like, time will heal, the weight of our cross will never be heavier than us, If you love, let it go...if it’s meant to be it will come back. Lines like this. But each time I have used it or said it or tweaked it a bit, I have always believed it and meant it. All of it was true and genuine under most circumstances. But sometimes life just proves otherwise. Some clichés are untrue. Like the time I told a dear friend,“ This sorrow/loss will strengthen you dear, for something in the future.”, Just when I heard myself say it then, I knew there was something wrong, it didn’t convince me either. The sentence lacked the lustre of my otherwise steadfast faith in oft repeated truths aka clichés. But it was too late the words had already left my tongue and it floated in the air and placed itself on her ear. She looked up at me. I saw it in her eyes that I had blundered in the name of solace. She looked at me with eyes wrought with disappointment, “you are my friend, and you still don’t understand, do you?”
Zerene, my friend was a dedicated gynaecologist who was rewarded with an enviable practice and nearly perfect record of happy patients to her list. But that was no surprise to us. For she never compromised on her work or her dedication. She wore her heart on her sleeves for the ‘girls’, like she called them. She almost became their mothers. She had the uncanny ability to see them, the girls as her own. That was her professionalism. Contrary to her friend’s advice “Zerene detach yourself from the moment, be professional.”
Like every doctor who at some point in their practice reaches a state of Buddha, like I would like to call it. Her enlightenment did come as well. As a rude shock and the toughest reality check; that of losing one her ‘girls’. Just like that. Not even in the labour room, or in operation theatre. Just like that, after dinner and after quietly relishing some payasam her husband brought her. They called it embolism.
{(Amniotic fluid embolism AFE) is a rare and incompletely understood obstetric emergency in which amniotic fluid, foetal cells, hair, or other debris enters the mother's blood stream via the placental bed of the uterus and triggers an allergic reaction. This reaction then results in cardio respiratory (heart and lung) collapse and coagulopathy}
It didn’t take much time or large quantities of fluid, I am told. Everything happened in minutes and in teeny weenie measure trickling into her bloodstream, for no reason other than just like that. By the time Zerene arrived, it had been minutes that the girl’s heart had stopped beating. But Zerene quickly checked for the foetal heartbeat. The baby was alive and then and there Zerene took the baby out. The baby is well and ready to be fed. But there is no mother.
She did everything she could possibly do. Like Faizal always says. She is at her best during a crisis. Working efficiently. It usually takes few days for it to sink in. But this time Zerene just withdrew. For the next day the girl’s husband came to see her to apologise for his entire family, if in case anyone of them had unknowingly accused her of anything. Also to thank her for saving the baby in time. Zerene just remained emotionless. I knew that look. I knew it was the calm before the storm. So I quickly went to her and she collapsed to a heap. Her sense of loss was deep. She kept replaying the entire day, entire week, if somewhere she could’ve done something differently. She wondered if she should’ve tried more at resuscitating her girl. She wondered if she made right choice of going for the baby than spending more effort on the mother. She played the reel again and again and again. It was painful to watch. That was when I told her, “ Zerene, take this as something to strengthen you.” A cliché, like the several I have used before. But Zerene from the depth of the abyss, I thought she was pushing herself into. I heard her talk as if she was crying out from a deep well. Weak but firm. “This does not strengthen me Shalini. This weakens me. I am resigned now. I am resigned to the fact that as a doctor, I am just hands. He is in charge of giving and taking away. I am nothing.” And then she added, “ I exalt in my weakness.”
So that day I learned a new truth. Some things weaken you. And in being weak there is strength. So let it be.

Confessions of a Mother

I see that the children we have are miracles like any other. Like the bluish green tinge of the backwaters, like the blazing mighty sun taking its daily dip, far out in the sea, like meteors from space falling, sparing skyscrapers infested with all kinds of people, like the many acts of kindness that is bestowed upon us each day, we have nothing do with creating them: our children. Our job is to stand and wonder. Our job is to marvel and love. What has been given to us, as an ultimate act of mercy.
Today, my son walks up to me and hugs me tight, and said "Amma, I like you." His arms went around my waist and his cheeks rested on my stomach. He is all of five years. There in his eyes was a look of undivided, unadulterated, love. Just admiration and gratitude. As my eyes welled up, looking down at him, I wondered, do I deserve this. Like flashes. Quick repeated flashes, I remembered the moments I failed him. Failed him so completely. Like the time he came to me with his water colour painting of the scary deep sea monster, I looked at the pool of paint on the floor and big stain on my durrie, instead and said, can’t you be more careful. Or the time he came and said "amma, I want to take flowers for my teacher, she hugged me for naming all the animals", a pang of sheer jealousy and insecurity of the attention getting divided, I dismissed the act telling him, that she’s just doing her job. And many other thoughtless, cruel acts later, here is my son, hugging me and telling me I am the best.
My son is a good-looking child, well-behaved, courteous, loving and selfless. I look at myself everyday and wonder where he got all this from. Not from me. Not even from my husband. I look up heavenward again with tears and in silent awe, do I deserve this? I ask again. Then in an instant I get the answer. It doesn’t matter if I am worthy, it’s all love. My son loves me; it doesn’t matter if I am worthy. He loves me because the hand that made him is love itself. And today I saw the face of my God in him.