Yesterday I went to meet Sapna again. I got strength from her. She actually knew what was happening to Dadoo. I liked listening to what happened to aunty and how they coped with it, this reassured me. There was no pretension, no formalities, no polite talk with Sapna as I talked about Dadoo. She, on the other hand, narrated her trauma and how her healthy, sane mother-in-law changed.
Once they had to go to attend a marriage and Sapna got ready, she was all decked up with jewellery and a fine sari. They instructed their maid to take care of her. As their pet dog had a special bonding with her, they left it in her room. When they came back from the marriage they heard that the dog was making a lot of whimpering noise. Anxiety ridden they went in and saw that Rahul’s mother was sitting on the floor clutching her disheveled hair and crying. She was mumbling that someone had taken all her jewellery and ran away. Then she saw Sapna and started screaming and attacked her, ‘Give all my jewellery back, you have stolen it. How dare you wear my jewels.’ A stunned and hurt Sapna made up a story that she had taken the jewellery after taking permission from her. This did not pacify her and she screamed, ‘I know that you had taken the permission from me but I had not asked you to go to the market with this jewellery, what if someone had stolen it. You should have stayed inside the house with it, this is not to be shown to anyone. It belongs to my mother.’ Sapna was bewildered, because it was the jewellery given to her by her mother!
Then Rahul’s mother took all of it from Sapna and hid it in the clothes so that no one steals it again.
‘It was a traumatizing period, we did not know how she will react,’ said Sapna, ‘Then she developed this craze about cleaning the cupboards, she would throw everything on the floor and then tried to put the things back again, but she failed to put the things properly. Or she would pick up clothes from the cupboard and look at them intently for a while and then start crying inconsolably. It became so unbearable for us that in the end we had to empty the cupboards. We feared that it will somehow hurt her emotionally.’
‘But then at times she would sit in front of empty cupboards,’ added Rahul, ‘and she would act as if she was folding the clothes and putting those in the cupboard, whereas there were no clothes. It was so painful for us to see her like that but what to do?’
‘I used to cry for hours, but it never helped,’ said Sapna.
‘In fact I think she cried more than my mother during this phase,’ said Rahul sympathetically.
‘That is why I say to you, Rewa, please do not cry, you and your family have to go a long way. Crying does not help, it makes things worse, much worse for everyone,’ she said taking my hand.
‘We could not share this with anyone, that was another burden,’ she mumbled. ‘People made fun of her initially when we tried to tell them, the expression on their faces and their questions were such that we decided not to tell anyone, that made us more vulnerable and alone in this long struggle,’ she added.
‘In her last years my mother thought that Sapna was her daughter. She felt that this daughter is the only one who takes care of her, who knows who she was and who gave her food and took care of her daily needs. That helped at times to keep her in control but then that meant that Sapna had to be with her all the time. She became so restless if Sapna moved away even for a minute,’ Rahul recalled.
‘Yeah, she did not even allow me to go to the loo. Sometimes she would think that I was her mother or sister. And that was sad and funny at the same time,’ remembered Sapna. ‘For ten years I was inside the house, with her, I could not go anywhere. I was scared to leave her. I feared that she would hurt herself if I was not with her. But yes this disease changed me completely, it changed the way I looked, behaved, talked and did things. I aged so quickly. Rahul’s brothers and sisters are abroad. They would come once in a year or two years, and that did not add to comfort. In fact that meant more work. I dreaded anyone coming to our house, my hands were full and that is why I did not keep in touch with anyone for years.’
‘Oh Sapna, what all have you gone through!’ I cried in anguish.
‘The best ten years of her life, when she was young and full of desires and energy, were spent taking care of my mother,’ said Rahul looking lovingly at her, ‘now we have decided to do whatever we want to do. To hell with everything, we try to enjoy every moment,’ he added.
‘Sometimes I wonder about life, it changes gears with a situation and we think what if … but that does not change things a wee bit. We all have our paths to follow, I don’t know if these are pre-decided or we choose them but there is no escape. We might think that we could have done a thing differently but that is just thoughts, in the end it is only one way and rest is all thoughts and imagination. Reality is always what you are living,’ Sapna said philosophically.