Unburdened at last.

Samta is 64 years old and the mother of a marketing executive working with a bank. Little on the heavier side for her height of just above five feet, she consulted me for an ankle injury she sustained just as she was to alight the bus that was bringing her from the aircraft to the airport terminal here in our city as she was looking forward to rejoining with her family of three:  her son Chirag, Jasmin- Chirag’s wife  and their son Kahaan- after a gap of six months. This was the first time in her life that she had ventured out of her house for so long. She was returning after this stay with her daughter as well as with other family members spread across the United Kingdom.

I have known this family for over a decade now. Chirag would often consult me for his father’s orthopaedic issues. This elder gentleman was housebound for the past several years from the residua of stroke suffered at the height of his own career. Chirag had to take up a job rather early in life to augment his family’s finances. His father’s indispensation and frequent medical consultations posed significant challenges to Chirag on his career path.  

Once in a while Samta would also seek appointment along with her husband, for her arthritic knees. Samta’s demeanor was always reserved, and her face bore the marks of the strain put on her by having to look after her husband at home. ‘Gravitas’ was the word I associated with Samta’s facial expression. I had noted that none of them- including Chirag, a marketing executive- ever smiled; not even the invariable smile that accompanies the “bye bye” at the end of a consulting session.  However it was not out of lack of manners; they had, between the three of them, quite a lot to bear so that it perhaps rendered them that much inattentive to other aspects of interpersonal behavior. Caring for a person rendered paralysed by stroke is not only physically demanding but also emotionally draining because the stroke affected person has, often, an altered sense of reality and is quite insecure.  

 About seven years back, Chirag had invited  our family for his wedding to his beloved, a girl from a well educated family of a minority community. The parents on both sides had given in to their wards’ demands after some struggle with their choices, going against the community guidelines on both sides. The last few years had gone by without any major marital discord, apparently, and the couple’s son Kahaan was now in pre nursery.  All this and more had transpired between the last time Samta came along with her husband, and today, when she had come with her daughter-in-law, Jasmin.  Samta had lost her husband about a year back.

This time, unlike the other times, Chirag had refrained from taking a few hours  off from his new and better job, not because he did not like to or that he did not get permission to, but because Samta was quite comfortable with just Jasmin in coming to consult me.

Thankfully the injury Samta had sustained in her right ankle was nothing very serious and it was expected that she would do well in course of time. As I was conveying this to Samta, I had to make a determined effort not to be agog with wonder as I saw a lightness of expression on Samta’s face, adorned with a pleasant smile. I wondered whether it was a smile only because of knowing that it was just a minor injury, or whether it was majorly from the relief of being unburdened of a lifetime of some heavy responsibility that she could not have turned her face away from. As she walked out from my office, I noted that her previous limp was now hardly noticeable-certainly a sign of improvement, or, atleast a sign of being less weighed down than before.

Long lasting emotional states can alter your sense of wellbeing-either way. A sense of felt helplessness in altering one’s situation, as in Samta’s case, can add to one’s woes. There is a third way here, if one makes space for it. That way is of developing a Mindfulness practice even as one is in the throes of the woes! 

The prescription is to die to the 'I' in contrast to being weighed down by that alphabet- like all prescriptions, this one too is easier read and said than practiced and done.