Mrs Venkobarao.

I saw Mrs Venkobarao when I was 13 years old,walking in the R.R.L.staff colony where we were put up with a faraway look .Her thick hair was matted and tousled resembling a tailor birds nest and was carelessly dressed.I remember the inhabitants of that colony young and old nod their head sympathetically behind her back. Some kids called her batty.

One of them explained to me, a new entrant to that colony, that the year before ,her eldest son 18 years of age died whilst swimming along with his friends in a natural pond a mile away . His legs got enmeshed in the slush at the bottom of the fairly deep pond and and became entangled in some roots when he jumped into the pool.He drowned whilst his friends escaped.With ignorance and optimism of youth I wondered how a woman who had two other young sons, good looking and nice could crumble so abjectly under the weight of her sorrow,refusing to snap out of it even after several years .
Now I know. Why do I remember this woman after a lapse of 40 years that to with minutest details. Simple I am in a similar situation. I don't know what happened to Mrs. Rao . Did she snap out of her grief and accept it ?All that I know is that when my late brother visited Hyderabad few years back he met her 2 sons now grown into mature men,holding good jobs ,married with kids of their own and generally well settled in life.I hope that they have lost that sad expression I always associate with their memories.

Now why was I remembering Mrs Rao?In my circle of relatives and friends the woeful situation I find myself in has no precedence nor any parallel. She is the only person to have some semblance of affinity to my situation.The unbearable loss of the first born son.

I didn't know the importance of a first born son to a woman till one day after 2 years or so after Vidat's departure when I remarked that whilst my husband and second son could regain their balance quickly and continue with life as before I couldn't ,at which my second son remarked gently" Ma he was your favourite . He was your pet" . I said'' No ,to me both of you were and are like my two eyes' '.He walked away unconvinced.

I never thought that Vidat was my pet . I was comfortable with him ,yes .But pet ?He received more spankings and scoldings for being naughty than his younger brother ever did.Yet was it true?

I looked up in the Internet and there it unfolded. A woman feels complete, physically and emotionally by her first born son. No other child has this effect on her .

No wonder I remembered the sorrow of a woman I had seen 37 years back when my first born son departed.