When I went to leave my wife Jyoti and two children at the railway station for 15 days during the summer holidays, Madamji gave strict instructions,
“Take proper care of mom and dad and ask them to take medicine and food from time to time.”
“Yes…yes…okay, you go comfortably. What about 15 days, come after a month. Mom and dad and I will live happily… And as far as their thoughts are concerned… I am also their son after all.”
I also said it with great arrogance.
Jyoti sat in the train smiling and after some time the train started. When I left them and returned home, it was only 08:10 in the morning, so I thought I should bring kachori-samosa from outside so that mother does not have to prepare breakfast.
When I reached home, my mother said,
“Don’t you know…? We have stopped eating fried food for the last eight months. By the way, how would you even know which house you live in?”
Ultimately, both of them had breakfast of milk and bread.
After breakfast, I placed the medicine box in front of her and asked her to take the medicine, then mother said,
“How do we know which medicine to take? Every day the daughter-in-law takes it out and gives it to her.”
I called Jyoti and asked for medicine and got it for her and fed her.
Similarly, after Jyoti left, I had to call her countless times – what things were kept where, what mom and dad liked, what they didn't, when to give which medicine.
Every day, mother and father had to talk to their daughter-in-law and children 2 or 3 times a day.
Both of them were counting down the days.
To tell the truth, the faces of mother and father had become pale, as if someone had taken away the staff of their old age.
His irritation and irritability had increased over every conversation.
I myself started feeling helpless, I was not able to bear his loneliness.
Ultimately, keeping all his arrogance and ego of having a son on hold, Jyoti had to call him back after a week.
When Jyoti and the children returned home, the smile and happiness on the faces of the parents was worth seeing, as if green leaves had blossomed on the branch of a dry tree after autumn.
And why should it not be so… after all, his light which illuminated his family with his deeds had come.
During these days, I had understood one thing very well and that is that… the real support of the elderly parents in their old age is a good daughter-in-law… not the son.
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