Lessons in love: When solitude is no longer a choice

Amma sleeps,

Calm as dawn,

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As if the universe

were just a dream.

It isn’t a scene I could behold for long, so I shut the door gently and withdraw to my unsolicited solitude.

Amma isn’t my biological mother — the one I cremated a quarter century ago. She is my partner, whose hand was given to me in marriage 43 years ago. Since then, she has held my fingers like a toddler, confidence shining on her face.

She called me Dad for reasons I never understood — and she was Mom to me. Half the time, she loved me like crazy; the rest, she plotted to pierce the bubble of  solitude in which I had ensconced myself. It was a quirk of fate that has finally brought us together again — in the cone of silence that life now is.

Until recently, solitude was my loyal companion, arming me with the equanimity to face life’s frequent trials and tribulations. I was once so enamoured of lonesomeness that I even wrote a couple of panegyrics celebrating the incredible gift life had thrown my way.

Gift? Not exactly. It was an acquired skill — a way to keep the introverted child I once was, happy and engaged while my siblings and cousins made merry with the neighbourhood kids. Nine children from the Pattali clan — one joint family among many — formed a noisy crowd rowdy enough to scare away all the evils of the world.

On the sidelines of that mayhem, I began to nidify a cocoon of solitude that would later offer me a cozy space — a place to indulge in reveries. Handheld by Amma, I learned to read, write, and think independently.

A voracious reader herself, she never read me fairytales; instead, she inspired me with stories from the classics and scenes from the communist dramas that had shaped a generation in the years following Independence.

Whether she stonewashed mountains of soiled clothes, sun-dried dregs of boiled rice, tilled the soil to grow Chinese potatoes, or watered rows of palm trees, I would follow in her footsteps, doing homework or reciting poems. In those moments, I found a spiritual communion with my mother.

Looking back, I realise I wasn’t mature enough to build a castle of solitude. It was a metaphysical construct — a refuge for a weakling, a study in ontology. Amma was my life coach, whose whispers of wisdom made me philosophically rich.

She was never a happy person, destined as she was to head a joint family while the male breadwinners worked on alien soil. She juggled chores like a magician — a labourer by day, an academic by night. Her face was long and adust in the daylight, yet her risibility came alive when she was tickled by words, in the company of books and the stillness of the night.

I inherited the trait of isolophilia from a mother who never rued the invisibility of a father in her son’s life, making me an inveterate loner sooner than later. And solitude became the manger in which I was reborn as a creative soul.

Time to check on my partner again. That’s what I do when I’m not writing. No vicissitudes of life could break that commitment or determination, for we began this journey together at seventeen. Let me peek in.

Amma still sleeps,

as if the universe 

were just a dream.

The air is ​heavy with the scent of rosemary and memories. A new blanket of solitude now wraps her, keeping her in a state of stoic ataraxia that feels strangely unsettling. It isn’t the same solitude I once inherited, almost cheerfully, from my mother — the solitude she spent her whole life trying to pierce. The collective silence we now share feels eerie, a hollow echo of what was once my own universe, where a milky way of hope stretched endlessly across the sky.

In the quiet rhythm of her breath, I rediscover the solitude I once sought and now I fear — a silence where hope and loss become one. In her stillness, I see the echo of love that has distilled into solitude.

The new silence is cacophonous with a murmuration of thoughts and reflections. The new truth is no longer a lie. The new solitude is no longer a refuge, no longer a choice, but the susurrus of a prayer unspoken in the hush of forty-three shared years.

When reality sinks in, and you can’t even cry into the hands of darkness, it’s time to pack the bags for a new journey — one where there’s no cap on silence or solitude.

Hand in hand.  

wknd@khaleejtimes.com

• Dubai

Suresh Pattali

suresh@khaleejtimes.com