Bombay —Day Four

October 2, 2024

             There is a blankness I often feel when I am in Bombay, though sometimes sitting in the green balcony with the pale coral pink sofa and chairs, and the plants, often counters it. When we were younger, my sister and me, and my brother I guess, used to spend Sunday lunch here chomping down fried potatoe toasts and a cheesy crumb salad with dark green lettuce. I don’t remember what dessert we had after. 

I arrived here late Saturday. Our flight had to detour over Sri Lanka to avoid some turbulent weather and it added one hour to the flying time. Before I boarded, I went into a bit of a frenzy looking for an A6 book to chronicle my journey here and back. The frenzy had begun Friday and I felt desperate — like the book would save me from the anxiety I was feeling about the journey. By sketching and doodling I would survive the trip. I found a Midori blank book at WH Smith and added two juice-up pilot gel pens and felt content. Not sure why I couldn’t chronicle my journey in my regular journal. 

But it’s been nice to have this little book always by my side, to draw and write impressions and feelings and look through. 

As also usual it feels like so much has happened, and nothing has happened. 

As so many of us do, we send messages to each other while travelling, like — landed, through immi, got luggage, got cab, etc. Our text messages, my sister’s and mine, this time didn’t have the usual exuberances. The normal yay’s were replaced by ok’s and this continued all the way until I reached my Bombay home. My apprehension grew, but now that I was in the moment and the anxiety was a pained memory, there was relief too. That’s how it is when the thing I fear gets right in my face, and I am living it rather than worrying about it. 

And as soon as we sat for a short chat before I showered and settled, the closed faces and language shifted — to the normal pleasant feeling of being together. We spoke mostly of mom and over the next days of other things that needed addressing. 

Mom looked frail when I saw her at breakfast the next day but her arm was less bony than the picture my sister had sent me a few weeks ago. I could tell she had brain fog, that her normally sharp mind was dull and somewhere else. Pain does that to me, and I recognized it and named it and she was happy that someone had. She was in severe pain that day and she drifted through the day with several naps which scared me. I almost wondered if mom was slipping away in some way, depressed and hopeless. 

Perhaps she is but I see sudden spikes of joy and hope and her silly humour. 

I always eat a lot on my first day in Bombay and I had a severe gastric attack Sunday night, and my own brain fog on Monday, but I began my exercises with mom that morning and she could actually do more than I had imagined though less than she should be able to do. That evening I sat with her session with the physio and there too she pushed herself and both the physio and I were pleased. 

My sister had also requested help to get her into an exercise routine and that one was a disaster! She was unfit, stiff, and un-coordinated. After that first session we haven’t done another, and I am internally arguing about whether I should push her or let her take responsibility for herself. 

I push mom but the age makes that a necessity. 

Luckily our, my sister’s and my, relating has not been a disaster but a slow unravelling of many misunderstandings and projections and me realizing how frightened and overwhelmed she’s been. My mom plays her, which doesn’t work with me, and my sister saw that too exclaiming that, ‘Mom, makes a fool of me.’

Yesterday the orthopedic doc made a first visit. I pushed them to get in touch. He came in a jazzy red and black BMW, wearing pants the shade of purple with a blue striped shirt and a multi-colored tie. At first I wasn’t sure I liked him as he didn’t speak to mom but asked my sister and me about her. But he was very competent, he supported every single viewpoint I had over the things my sister and I were arguing about. I mean I didn’t bring them up; he just observed and said the things I had been saying. About walking more, about pushing the stiff joints beyond the pain, about some tests, about some special protein biscuits. He also read the family dynamics well, observed my sister was soft on mom while I pushed her and ticked off mom to try harder. 

Magically any little remnant of our fights over the previous months disappeared. I am grateful they did. I am guessing my sister saw that I only had mom’s best interests when I pushed certain viewpoints. But I am not even half way through the trip and I am not fooling myself that there isn’t potential for more conflict. 

As for me. I am counting the days to return and feeling guilty about it. The time I spend with mom and with my sister is good and I feel present and pleased but there is an exhaustion that comes over me here. This time there is a busyness between exercises for mom, and doc visits, and hot and cold packs, and there hasn't been time to contact anyone. But without that too, here my world shrinks and I feel a huge emptiness. I still haven’t figured out how to keep my life going — my creativity, productivity, and training while I am here, and until I do I fear planning a long visit. And I know there are long visits in the near future for many reasons.

It feels too exhausting to deal with everything that happens — like a shower that trickles and a tap that leaks after you shut it, musty smells, and clothes that never dry, and gastric upsets, and lack of sleep—and be there for mom and get on with life. 

For now, I am just chronicling that emptiness I feel in my little Midori book, along with all the precious moments, and maybe one day I might know the emptiness better. For it is not the emptiness of loneliness or boredom, as I am always surrounded by people and the schedule is overfilled with things to get done — it feels deeper, more visceral, perhaps even to do with childhood or times in my cradle. 

I just feel a huge hole. I’m glad I don’t have it today, but I did yesterday. And I am glad I have this A6 pictorial exploration of it. Easier to look through this than wade through pages of text when I have some distance from it all and want to process stuff.