Oonita Kathpalia Hiremath: A Tribute To My Mother

My mother in 2017.

My mother, Oonita Kathpalia Hiremath, passed away on August 16th, 2019, after battling with cancer. She was 84. No tribute that I or anyone else can write can do justice to the wonderful person that she was, but I shall try nevertheless, because I have been able to think of little else besides her ever since she left. A part of me died when she left, and life will never be the same again. But life does go on because it must.

My mother's passing away has been a loss of epic proportions, and I'm still trying to come to terms with what happened. She was a kind, gentle, generous, calm tempered, empathetic, caring, good natured, intelligent, down to earth, gracious, elegant, and genuinely good human being. She was extremely articulate, had a terrific sense of humour, and had this great knack for telling stories. We would sit for hours and listen enthralled to stories from her life, and from our childhood. Between her fantastic memory and her legendary story-telling abilities, listening to her was a real treat. I was always very proud of the kind of person she was and I always felt a great sense of pride in introducing her to my friends. What better testament to my mother's endearing ways than the fact that a few of our friends became closer to her than they were to us, and would come home all the way just to meet her even when we weren't around. A few of my sisters' friends would drop everything and come across for 2 full days year after year just to help her out during her annual Kasida exhibitions. My mother was equally at ease interacting with kings and global political bigwigs, as she was interacting with people who had been far less fortunate; she was good and fair with people, irrespective of their stature in life, and she treated everyone with utmost respect.

My mother was always very supportive of us, even when other "grown ups" questioned the wisdom of our actions. She was supportive when my sister decided to leave her course in college halfway through and skip a year; she was supportive when my other sister decided to rough it out for 2 years in the tropical forests of Central America as part of her work instead of sitting in a cushy, comfortable office; she was supportive when I got fed up with corporate life and decided to set up my own little work-from-home business. She was always there to advise us in the most non interfering manner possible, and she had full faith that her children knew what they were doing and what was best for them; if we were ever wrong in our decisions, she was always there for us.

My mother encouraged all my interests throughout my life, from climbing and measuring trees as a child; to playing with animals at a very young age; to reading Amar Chitra Katha comics and watching movies; to tracking the weekly US Top 10 and UK Top 10 music charts; to trying my hand at table tennis, tennis, swimming and football; to following tennis; to playing Chess and Scrabble; to keeping up with friends; to travelling around the world. She always stood behind me to pursue whatever activities made me happy. She in fact went a step further, and tried to be actively involved in whatever interested me. So suddenly she was watching Amitabh Bachchan movies with me, listening to Michael Jackson songs with me, and watching Roger Federer tennis matches with me.

I can't remember a single incident when my mother lost her cool with us, or spoke to us in a loud voice. As kids, we did get the silent treatment every now and then if we were out of line, but never anything more than that. The only things that ever upset her were if someone was rude, or if someone disrespected elders, or if someone was dishonest, but she had ingrained these core values in us so strongly that none of us could ever be like that.

My mother was born in Bahawalpur District, now in Pakistan, on June 13th, 1935. She was the youngest child of Ram Narain Kathpalia (1899 - 1958) and Kaushalya Kathpalia (1910 - 2003). Her elder siblings were Jagat Kathpalia (1924 - 1948), Pearey Kathpalia (1926 - 1986), and Indira Kathpalia (born in 1931). My grandfather was an irrigation engineer who worked with the Nawab of Bahawalpur, and the family travelled around in remote areas as my grandfather moved from one irrigation project to another. The family also went and stayed in Karachi from time to time in the plush locality of Clifton. My mother's kind nature was seen in abundance when she became a vegetarian at the age of 5 in a strictly non vegetarian household; the family used to move around with their farm animals, and my mother befriended the 50 odd hens that they had, gave each one a unique name, and refused to eat her "pets". So the hen with a slight limp was called "langar deen" and all the other hens had similar appropriate nick-names.

The Kathpalia Family in 1942 in Pakistan.

In 1947, the family came to Delhi after partition. The Nawab helped them escape to India during those turbulent times. My mother was interviewed in 2018 by the Partition Museum, Amritsar, to talk about her experiences from the time of India-Pakistan partition in 1947. She gave the interview in her own inimitable style and brought alive her first hand experiences from that period. My mother went to Queen Mary's School in Delhi. She hardly spoke any English when they came to India, but soon she was so adept in English that she went on to do her BA and MA in English from Miranda House in Delhi University. She even became a member of Delhi University's Shakespeare Society, and went on to act in Shakespeare plays like "A Mid Summer Night's Dream".

She worked as a teacher briefly with primary children but kind hearted as she always was, she quit when she once witnessed another teacher hitting a child. She sat and cried with the child, and decided this was not the job for her. She worked as an announcer for Air India for a while. She then had a long innings at Cottage Industries as a buyer, and that inculcated a lifelong love for craft, design and textiles, interests she would come back to later in life.

She married my father, Jagdish Rudraya Hiremath, on December 31st, 1964. He was an Indian Foreign Service officer from the batch of 1954. They got to know each other after his first posting abroad in Tokyo (Japan), where he served from 1956 to 1959. He was on a home posting then, and he was a friend and batch-mate of my mother's brother in law, who was an officer with the Indian Administrative Service. My father got posted to New York (USA) in 1962 and as luck would have it, Cottage Industries sent my mother to New York for an 8 month assignment for the World's Fair in 1964. That's where my parents got to know each other well and decided to get married.

They moved to Nairobi (Kenya) in 1965. My elder sister was born there in 1967. They then moved to Manila (The Philippines) in 1967, and my second sister was born there in 1970. I was born in Delhi in 1973, during their home posting from 1971 to 1975. From 1975 to 1977, our family lived in Sofia (Bulgaria); from 1977 to 1980, we lived in Thimpu (Bhutan); from 1980 to 1983, we lived in Delhi; from 1983 to 1985, we lived in Belgrade (Yugoslavia); and from 1985 to 1989, we lived in Vienna (Austria). Vienna was my father's last posting, and he retired as the Indian Ambassador there. The days in the IFS were largely happy days, though there were times when they were unsettling and challenging - overall, my mother went through a lot of memorable experiences that added to her endless repertoire of interesting stories.

The family then moved back to Delhi, and Delhi was where my parents were to stay for the rest of their lives. My mother kept herself busy by running Kasida Handicrafts, an organization that made hand embroidered clothes for women. My mother did it out of love for the craft (she was a talented designer), and in order to provide employment and livelihood to women. My mother made a lot of close friends from the different phases of her life - her college days at Miranda House, her working days at Cottage Industries, her days as an Indian Foreign Service wife, and her days at Kasida - she made it a point to keep in touch with her friends, and many of these friendships were to last a lifetime.

My father passed away in 2013. He was there for my second sister's wedding in 2000 and when my niece was born in 2003. He was also there when my wife Kamalini Roy and I got married in 2011 but he left before the birth of my son Rehaan in 2014. My father's passing away was a big shock, but my mother was there, strong as ever, to somewhat lessen the grief for us, because we knew she was one person who was going through more pain than we were, and yet she was doing it with amazing dignity and grace.

My Mother on her 75th Birthday in 2010.

For me, my mother was my best friend. She was the first person I would go to when I wanted to share any piece of good news or bad news, or when I wanted to discuss a problem. She would go out of her way to try and help me in any way that she could. She was there for me when I struggled with shifting schools in my childhood, when I took time to settle into my first job, when I had to deal with difficult bosses, when I had my heartbreaks as a youngster, when I took time to settle into my marriage, and when I had my moments of doubt as a small entrepreneur. Without her words of advice, always in a non interfering way, I don't know how I would have pulled through some of my most difficult times. She was generous beyond measure. She made family birthdays very special, with her thoughtful gifts and beautifully planned out get-togethers. Festivals - Diwali, Ganesh Chaturthi and Raksha Bandhan in particular - were made very memorable, as she put in a lot of effort to decorate the house beautifully, and arrange for delicious family meals. Every time I went on one of my international travels, I would suddenly get an envelope with a significant amount of money and a note wishing me a very happy holiday.

Sometimes people do things for elders out of a sense of duty and responsibility, but in the case of my mother, as also in the case of my father, my sisters and I did it out of genuine love, respect, admiration and gratitude. My sisters and I took career decisions so that we could be with our parents when they started ageing. We were all there for my father and for my mother during times when they were ill and needed support, and we would not have had it any other way, because they were always there for us, not only in our childhood, but well into our adult lives, to support us in every way possible.

My Mother with Rehaan in 2016.

My mother was diagnosed with cancer in October 2018. She had surgery and chemotherapy. She responded rather well to them. As recently as May 2019, the doctors said she was fine and she should stop seeing herself as a patient. We were all so relieved and happy. Then her cancer came back very rapidly and on July 15th, 2019, after her scan, the doctors told us that the cancer had spread very aggressively to her liver and there was nothing they could do for her, other than palliative care to take care of her pain and discomfort. We were shell shocked, but my mother handled the news much more bravely than we did. She said she knew the meaning of liver cancer, and we should make the most of whatever time was left. She told the three of us that parents can't go on forever, we should be happy that she had lead such a long and happy life, and we should be prepared to let go when the time came. She expressed her wish that she should go from home, and not from a hospital with needles and pipes sticking into her. Most people in the family were practical and accepted the inevitable, but Kamalini and I kept hoping and believing that a miracle would take place and we ran around exploring alternative treatments. That alas was not meant to be.

For the 1 month that my mother was with us after her diagnosis, we got to see what genuine love was all about. My sisters and I were of course with her every single day, but her 88 year old sister, and 90 year old sister in law would come and see her practically every day. The latter in fact rushed back from the US, where she had gone to celebrate her 90th birthday with her children. Not only did she rush across, but her daughter and son in law, both doctors in the US, also came for 10 days. My niece heard the news and she took a week off from her boarding school and came to see her ill grandmother. My mother's old friend, a professor at Cambridge, dashed across from England for 3 days to see her. My mother's Delhi based close relatives and friends, both hers and ours, all dropped in regularly to meet her. She would really enjoy meeting close people and she would chat with them cheerfully as if nothing was wrong. Her only request to the doctors was to keep her as pain-free as possible, and to not give her anything that would make her drowsy or less alert.

After about three weeks, the illness started catching up with my mother. She became weaker and weaker because she hardly had an appetite. Her trips from her bedroom upstairs to the drawing and dining room downstairs reduced and eventually came to a halt. She started feeling very low on energy and found it difficult to get out of bed. Yet through it all, one never heard her complain. She took it in her stride and said she was at peace. She continued to have this amazing sense of calmness and tranquility, while all of us watched helplessly as each day was worse than the previous day.

It is difficult to prepare oneself for such an eventuality, even when one has been given notice. Her passing away still came as a big shock to me. She went first thing in the morning. I shall always regret that I wasn't there with her at the end, but my sisters both were. I got a call from my second sister at 5:40 in the morning. I feared the worst when I heard the phone ringing so early in the morning, but what she had to say was that my mother was a little short of breath, so they were considering getting an oxygen cylinder at home. I started the process of getting ready to leave for my mother's place. 10 minutes later, my elder sister called. I asked her if they had been able to make enquiries about oxygen cylinders but she said it was too late. I rushed across and was there within half an hour, hoping against hope that she was still alive, but that was not to be. My mother's last statement had been "That will not be a problem" when my elder sister said she'd have to sit up in bed to take her Crocin. She sat up momentarily with my sister's help, and then left us before she could take her medicine. That one statement was so true to the positive person she always was. I was with her the previous evening and had planned to return later that day after getting some homeopathic medicines for her. The homeopath was in fact the only doctor who had given an iota of hope, and I was clinging on to that. Kamalini helped me hang on to that hope with her positive talk, and though my mother did not get cured, that hope probably helped me get through those initial days following the diagnosis instead of falling into a complete depression, which is what happened when I first got to know about her diagnosis.

Life will never ever be the same. I have lost my best friend, my biggest supporter, and my soundest advisor. It's a void that will never ever be filled. Little things constantly remind me of her, and I am overcome with grief. Over time, I hope I will learn to look back with a smile at all the happy, precious moments I spent with her. I wish my son had spent a lot more time with his grandmother - he had just turned 5 when she went. One of his favourite activities was sitting on her lap while she read out books to him and told him stories, in a style that only she could. Four decades earlier, she had done the same to me, fascinating me with stories about Kapish, the monkey with the magical tail! The only consolation we all have is that she was not in a lot of pain when she went, she was at peace and was mentally prepared to move on, and finally, she went surrounded by a lot of love. May she rest in peace, and may she look down and see just how much she is loved and missed by the people she has left behind.

Love you and miss you Mama, more than anyone or anything in the world! Thank you for everything! Remembering you for the rest of my life with love, respect, admiration, gratitude and pride!

Kamalini and Me with my Mother and my Father
at our Wedding Reception in 2011.