Love...Through The Ruins…

“Maa, ekbar edike eso…ekta jinis dekhe jaao…”

“…Mother, come over here please…have a look at this…” the feminize-boy called his Mom in a tone almost childish that hardly match his age or height. I became more embarrassed. He had been standing just in front of me, as close that he almost stepped on my feet and I could easily feel his minty breath right through my gray hairs.

He had been standing there nearly for fifteen minutes, reading something on the pamphlet board on the wall just above my head.

I felt more embarrassed…so far it was only he, now he was inviting his mother to join the show!

I glanced at his mother—sitting at the other corner of the waiting hall—a mid aged lady, somewhat weird looking on a very loose salwaar kaamiz with uncombed hairs about the length of her neck. She must have been exhausted; I clearly remembered how she staggered her legs into the room resting on the shoulder of her son with the right hand.

All of us were sitting in the patients’ lobby waiting for the Neurologist to arrive and our turns to come. I was thinking about my CT Scan Report of the Brain and about the headache that I often end the day with.

Meanwhile all these embarrassing ‘close encounter’ and most unwilling ‘invitation’ to gather more crowds around me!

I only sighed while the woman once again staggered her steps through the hall and drew near me.

The boy pointed at the bulletin board above and uttered in a very soft touchy tone:

“Here is a report on Epilepsy mom—indeed some unknown facts about the disease—it says, even Isaac Newton, Napoleon, Louis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Socrates, Joan of Arc, Van Gogh were life long patients of Epilepsy”…

…then suddenly his voice changed into the most sympathetic whisper—“you see Mom, there is nothing to lose heart…you can still lead a normal life with it…like all those”!

I was startled and looked up straight into his eyes—

his mother must have thought all her dreams and normality ruined as she came across the crude reality of suffering from Epilepsy—but she is fortunate enough to have a son like him to love her and lead her a way out right through the ruins of her shattered hopes.

I looked into his face—and this time he didn’t look childish, rather a grown-up—enough to bring her loving Mother out of the depressions of life.