Mamaji: A Memoir
Elisheba Haqq
A NOTE ABOUT THE TERM MAMAJI
As with any family, terms used to refer to relatives vary greatly. In my family, the term “Mamaji” (Maa-ma-gee) was translated as “respected mother”. Indeed, the word “Mama” means mother in Urdu; a language my family members spoke along with Hindi and Punjabi. Some Indian families use the Hindi term “Mama” to refer to the mother’s brother. In our home, we used the Urdu term “Mamu” (Maa-moo) for our mother’s brothers
I remember the night Mamaji died. I’ve been told that I couldn’t possibly remember, but for me the last time I saw her was the day she died. I was only three, but I distinctly remember the clear, red flashing light that flooded the sitting room. My sister Hannah and I were playing with toy cars near the staircase. We pushed them up and down the green carpeting that had a pattern cut into it. I saw the bottom of a stretcher first as it moved above me and then Mamaji’s hand reached out. Her index finger had a Band-Aid wound around it and I wish so badly that I had taken her hand. It was her final goodbye to me, and I didn’t know it. When I play that scene over in my head, I see her hand and then I reach up and grab it. Then I hug her and she kisses me and we have a mother–daughter moment—one that I could carry with me for the rest of my life. But that didn’t happen. Instead, I have a faint, brief memory that she looked pale and worn out. I guess the cancer had fully taken hold, but I was busy playing. Somewhere over my head I heard, “Poor girls, they don’t even know what’s happening.”
When you lose something, there is always the hope that perhaps that lost item will show up again. But Mamaji wasn’t lost; she died. She was gone for good. The older I got, the more I missed her. I had more time on my hands to imagine the increasing list of “what if’s.”
As a three-year-old, I was innocent and protected. The pain that was to come was muffled in the trappings of playing and enjoying all the extra attention that Mamaji’s death produced. Later, as a young adult, there were many months when I didn’t even think about her. But when I became a mother, Mamaji or the absence of Mamaji, was ever present. Something would happen that I wanted to share with her, but then, WHAM! I remembered—Oh yes! I have no mother. I have no mother to call, no mother to invite, no mother to give me a wise counsel or a reprimand, no mother to rejoice or cry with and, most of all, no mother to grow old with.
I’m just starting to understand how important it is to grow old with your mother. Because, not only would Mamaji have been uniquely interested in me and my life, but also as she grew older, I would have had a chance to be with her and see my future self. Watching Mamaji age; her hair grow whiter, her face line and crease with the years of joy and sorrow, the skin on her hands grow translucent and paper thin—all this would have helped me know what to look for, what to expect. The idea of aging gracefully, Mamaji could have taught me that.
And I could have taken care of Mamaji. She would have taught me her recipes and then I would have reproduced them for her in her older years—less spicy, of course, to protect her aging system, but still her recipes. I could have taken her for a drive, just to get some fresh air; hand-washed her salwars and nightgowns and returned them to her fresh-smelling and sweet. I could have helped manicure her nails, pluck an errant hair around her eyebrow, groom her scalp with neem oil, or perhaps we could have enjoyed a massage or facial. I could have taken her to the doctor and been her most vocal advocate because I speak health-care language and know the routine. I could have assessed her condition, perhaps by auscultating her lungs or putting my hand to her forehead, my brow furrowed with worry, and then bundled her off to the doctor and to the nearby pharmacy for some decongestant. Mamaji could have traveled with us on our sister trips, all five of us enjoying India or Europe together, learning and appreciating a new food or just laughing at a joke. She could have been with me when my boys were born, counseled me through their growing years and then, much later, she could have enjoyed their baraat and danced at their weddings. Or I could have simply sat next to her, close and sheltered in her company, saying nothing, but just being near her—reassured by the regular patterns of her breath, her sighs, perhaps a small cough now and then. Maybe we could have gone through the old family photos, and I would finally learn who the heck were those people at her wedding, because Papaji has no clue, and everyone else who might have known is already dead.
It’s been said that it’s unnatural for parents to bury their children and it’s true. But it’s just as unnatural for seven young children to have to bury their mother. It’s shattering. Yet none of us children were at Mamaji’s burial. She was not buried in Minnesota or in India but in Fairlawn, New Jersey. She shared a headstone with my paternal grandmother, my Dadhi, who had died years earlier. Both their graves are marked with a double headstone that bears the scripture, “Blessed are they that die in the Lord.” Only Papaji attended the burial, and maybe a few uncles living in New Jersey as well. About a half decade later, my relatives who lived in New Jersey moved out of the state. I saw the gravesite for the first time at age 26, after I had married. It’s a good thing that none of us really placed too much importance on visiting a grave, or maybe because Mamaji was buried so far away we had learned to put it out of our minds. In any case, the fact that her grave was inaccessible was convenient and helpful in aiding her successor to put her name, her memory, and the fact that she ever existed, out of our lives. And out of Papaji’s life.
When I finally realized how little I knew of Mamaji, I began researching to find out who she had been. Her friends, whom she met during the two years she lived in Minnesota, loved her so much that even more than 50 years after her death, they still check on me and my siblings, sending cards and letters, attending weddings and celebrating our milestones with us. From hearing them speak of her, I knew she must have been a wonderful friend. I gleaned bits of information here and there from Papaji and my siblings. I learned she was a wonderful mother—not perfect of course, but still a loving, concerned, and caring mother.
The death of Mamaji was, by current standards and medical advances, a mistake. If it happened today, there would have been a million-dollar lawsuit filed and my family would have won. While Mamaji was living in Hopkins, Minnesota, she contracted a rare form of cancer called a hydatidiform mole. This “mole,” which was really just a nice euphemism for a tumor, began as a fetus within her womb, which morphed and grew into cancer.
The way I see it, is that once upon a time I had a sibling that was so selfish that it was not satisfied to join me and the rest of my siblings in the living world. For this greedy, tiny being, it was not enough to drink up my mother’s life blood and juices. No, there came a moment that it rose up, changed form and grew into an invasive, life-sapping, killing, tumor. It did not want to share Mamaji with me or any of us. It gave up whatever chance it had at life and took Mamaji with it as well.
A hydatidiform mole is quite rare. In the 1960s it occurred in about only 1 in 100,000 pregnancies. The ob-gyn in charge did not have the benefit of modern ultrasounds and the tumor began to spread quickly. A hysterectomy would have removed the evil baby-tumor and completely cured Mamaji. But without the benefit of modern technology and knowledge, the doctor was not able to diagnose her early enough, nor was he able to properly advise my parents of the danger of saving the uterus and ovaries. Mamaji did not realize the extent of her illness until it was much too late. As the cancer spread throughout her body she was ever hopeful, anticipating a full recovery and making plans for her future. She underwent chemotherapy and radiation. She rapidly lost weight and large chunks of her hair. While the medical team provided her with palliative treatments, the cancer moved swiftly through her system, spreading to her brain and killing her. Six months after writing an optimistic letter to her closest friend, Gloria, she was gone. She would never again feel the coolness of Mussoorie mountain air as she slept, marvel at the rhythms of a new song, or laugh while running through the monsoon rains. Worst of all, I would never be a part of her life.
There is a photo that was taken of our family during those last days of Mamaji’s life. A photographer arrived to take our picture and captured a memory for me: The Family We Once Were. In the photo, we are sitting outside in the expansive empty land that surrounded our rental home in Hopkins, long before Minnesota ceased to be the Land of 10,000 Lakes and became the Land of 10,000 Big Boxes. The trees behind us are in the peak of their vivid autumnal splendor. We are together but sitting in what seems to be three groups. To the right of the photo, Papaji’s unmarried sister Rashida sits ramrod straight in a pink sari and is the only one looking directly into the camera. Next to her are my two oldest siblings, Miriam, 17, and Gideon, 16, who are both grinning broadly—which were most likely fake smiles, given that they were the only children who completely understood the gravity of our situation. Miriam is holding me in her lap. I had just woken from a nap. I was grumpy and no matter what the photographer tried, I refused to cooperate. I am stubbornly looking down into my lap, my dress bunched up around me. In the middle group is my sister Hannah, 4, just a year older than me. She is looking toward Mamaji, and it is hard to tell if she is smiling or ready to cry. My brother Emmanuel, 12, is behind her and he is kneeling with his hands in his pockets, face serious, his eyes intent on Papaji. Next to him is Deborah, 10, who is looking rather confused. She is nearly touching Mamaji, but her shoulders are shrugged as she grasps her knees, hugging herself. The last group is my brother David, 7, with my parents. His hair is mussed and he is sitting contentedly next to Mamaji. My father sits close by, strong and handsome, and impeccably dressed in his Ricky Ricardo black suit and tie, his dark pompadour shining. He is pointing at something in the distance and is smiling a half smile. And there is Mamaji—my beautiful, graceful mother, who could not disguise the ravages of her disease. Despite her careful makeup and lipstick, she is pale and frighteningly thin. Her hair is sparse and her dark eyes have sunken into her face. She is wearing a lovely silk sari and her left collarbone juts through her lilac blouse. Her face is full of pain and sadness.
A month later Mamaji was dead.
* * * *
On the day Mamaji died, Hannah remembers that she was in her room with Deborah and heard some loud commotion downstairs. Deborah told her, “Wait here, I’ll go check.” When she returned, her face was filled with tears and she told Hannah, “Mamaji died.” Hannah went down and saw Miriam sobbing, Emmanuel sitting on the sofa, his arm around David, both of their heads bowed. But even then she was unsure of what had happened. Just a few weeks earlier, Hannah had been ill with pneumonia in the hospital. Mamaji was in the hospital at the same time and, even though she was weak and in great pain, she went to the pediatric ward and held Hannah until she stopped crying and could fall asleep.
David knew Mamaji was sick but didn’t understand the severity of her illness. Shortly before her death, he sat down at the kitchen table, waiting for his dinner. Mamaji put his dinner in front of him. He was disappointed because, instead of her usually tasty Indian food, she had made an American dish, something with noodles. David protested and pushed the plate away.
“I don’t want this! I want Indian food, some murgi tharkari!”
Mamaji didn’t say anything.
After she left the kitchen, Emmanuel scolded David, “Don’t you know she’s sick? She got out of bed to make food for you and all you can do is complain.”
David didn’t understand what was happening. It was much later, when he was older that he realized what he had done and the guilt washed over him. Deborah remembers playing with Emmanuel outside her room the day Mamaji was taken to the hospital and hearing her shout for them to be quiet because she had agonizing headaches and seizures as the cancer spread to her brain. Emmanuel recalls being upstairs in bed when he was woken in the early morning hours by the sound of crying. He rushed downstairs and saw one of Mamaji’s dearest friends, Mrs. Zipf, crying. She said, “You poor kids.” No one told him Mamaji was dead; he just knew. The last time he had seen her, she said to him, “Emmanuel be a good boy.” My oldest brother, Gideon, told her goodbye and Mamaji told him she would see him soon, as she often did when she was not feeling well and going to the hospital.
Only Miriam was old enough to be with Mamaji in the hospital, since the rules did not allow anyone under 17 to visit. Many years later, Miriam told me how in the days before Mamaji’s death, she had stayed at her bedside, caring for her the best she could. Mamaji struggled to even urinate and asked Miriam to run water to assist. Mamaji usually did not complain or vocalize discomfort, but her fortitude was no match for the evil cancer and she cried out in pain. The ordered medication had almost no effect. Miriam was frightened and ran out to the nurse’s station to beg for a stronger dose. The nurse was curt, “She can’t have anything yet. She has to wait.” I always remember Mamaji and the agony she bore when I treat patients in pain. I advocate and provide for their absolute comfort and rest. But Miriam was a teenager and didn’t know what to do. She hurried back to the room, desperately rubbing Mamaji’s temples with Vicks VapoRub. It wasn’t until Mrs. Zipf arrived and spoke sternly to the nurses that something was done to ease the pain. Soon the prescribed visiting time was over, and Miriam leaned over to kiss Mamaji goodbye and promised to come back the following day. The next morning, Miriam waited anxiously by the window, a bag packed with a few items, watching for the car. When Mrs. Zipf arrived, she slowly walked to the front door.
“Let’s go. Mamaji is waiting!” Miriam said.
But Mrs. Zipf sat down, not sure of how to deliver the next piece of news, “Oh Miriam—your mother died. She’s gone to be with the Lord.”
It was the last thing Miriam expected to hear, and the news quickly spread throughout the house. Miriam and Gideon conferred in the hallway. What should they do now? How would they tell the other kids? How would they contact Papaji? It seems outrageous to think that a 17 and 16-year-old would be faced with such a grave situation. I cannot imagine a modern-day teenager having the courage to face such a situation as my brother and sister had.
But for me, on that day, everything seemed to be going along just fine. I do not remember that Mamaji had been unusually sick. I heard commotion and crying around me, but I did not understand what had happened. I am uncertain at what age I fully understood that she had died. No one came out and just told me, “Mamaji is dead.” How do you explain such a thing to someone of my age?
Papaji was in India at the time of her death. I have been told that this was Mamaji’s wish—that his work in India should not be hampered due to her illness. Indeed, she had always been his greatest support. She had written his monthly newsletters, and helped him manage his office from our home in Chandigarh. She had traveled to Chicago so he could complete his PhD, at the same time finishing her master’s degree while she was pregnant with Emmanuel. She had agreed to live in Minneapolis for a year or two to further his work as a preacher. She had raised seven children, largely on her own, so he could concentrate on his passion. So, perhaps, it is understandable that she would have made such a request. But what is difficult to understand is that Papaji actually upheld her wish. She had been ill for a long time and he had gone on many trips. During this trip, he heard of her death through a telegram and rushed back to Minneapolis but it was too late. Mamaji died without her husband or children beside her.
In the days that followed her death, all sorts of wonderful things happened to David, Hannah, and me. Another one of Mamaji’s best friends, Aunt Helen (we called her “aunt” out of respect), arrived to take us out. She wore a gold and white brocade dress, shiny patent leather shoes with square heels and told us she was taking us to our first movie. We arrived at the Mann Southtown Theatre. The state of the art theater featured windows of colored glass on the outside of the building. I had never seen a movie before. Watching Julie Andrews as Maria Von Trapp, traipsing through the Alps, singing along with the seven motherless Von Trapp children in The Sound of Music thrilled and excited the three of us. We laughed and thoroughly enjoyed the antics of the children as they tried to sabotage the Baroness’ plan to capture the Captain. But Aunt Helen’s eyes remained red before and after the movie. The irony of the story was lost on us—as it turned out, The Sound of Music was to play a role in the outcome of my life.
A few days later, I was dressed in a scratchy frock and left in the church nursery with Hannah. Everyone else was gathered in the sanctuary and we could hear talking and singing going on inside. It was the day of Mamaji’s funeral, but for me it was just another day in which I could play unsupervised without rules or any grownups telling me to be quiet. It was great fun. David came in during the service and reported that the church was full of people. Later on, after the church was empty, he said he saw Papaji kneeling and crying next to Mamaji’s coffin. I don’t recall if Papaji was sad or lonely, because he was basically absent during this time as he continued to travel the way he always had. Many years later, he told us that he had been so wracked with grief that after the burial he walked for hours and hours, mourning his first love and wondering how he was going to raise the seven children that were now left solely in his care.
The home that Mamaji made for us in India was, from my older siblings’ accounts, a paradise. For me it was only a fantasy. I heard them talk about the olden days; trips to Delhi for Christmas shopping, visits from relatives, helping Mamaji make sticky, marigold-colored jalebi in the kitchen, packing trunks with snacks or, “tucks” for boarding school and hundreds of other stories that seemed too good to be true. Sometimes I try very hard to imagine what a home like that must have felt like.
I can envision Mamaji wearing just one sari. It’s the only one I know belonged to her, a pink leaf, block-printed silk she wore while lulling me to sleep. In my fantasy, I pretend that I know what Mamaji’s cooking tastes like. I pretend I can see her opening the front door to welcome my Nani. I pretend that she is smiling and shooing me outside to play in our front yard. I pretend she is combing my hair and twisting it into braids. I hate that I cannot be granted even a small part of this dream. When I hear my older siblings recall the love, warmth, and smells of this home, I long to remember us in this place.
Chandigarh, India, is the capital of the state of Punjab. The town had been planned by the French architect, Le Corbusier, and it is a beautiful city with many gardens and trees. Mamaji had carefully planned her dream home, choosing stone flooring, wood trims, mantles and top-of-the-line bathroom finishes. Miriam, Gideon, Emmanuel, and Deborah remember the care Mamaji took in each selection she made. When it came time to build the stone wall and the floor of the veranda, she and my siblings spent hours rooting through piles of stones, casting aside the rough or misshapen ones. It was a large, double-story house, with open, airy verandas and housing for the extra help Mamaji needed.
When we left Chandigarh, Mamaji made it clear that she would be back. When she gave the keys to Nani, she left the house with all our family keepsakes inside—photos, knickknacks, books and furniture. When we arrived in Minneapolis, nothing could have prepared us for the cold November weather and I suspect nothing could have prepared Mamaji for the dreadful little house that greeted her. It was a small, white two-story farm house. The floors creaked, the basement was constantly flooded, and the house was generally falling apart. The boys used a toilet in the basement that sat in a corner surrounded by water, and they strategically placed tiles so they could use the toilet without sloshing through the foul water. It was a far cry from the palatial home we had left behind. While the land surrounding the house was beautiful, it was isolated and lonely. The only people nearby were an old couple that owned the house. They didn’t particularly care for the loud group of wild banshees that had just moved in. Poor Mamaji—her new life in America was far removed from the home she had worked so hard to create. It must have been a terrible shock to her, even though she was somewhat accustomed to American culture.
I have two flash memories of Mamaji. I can see them in my mind, and I have to believe that they happened. Our short time together was in a new, cold place, which was as foreign to her as it was to me. I feel cheated that I have no memories of her where she was at her happiest—in India. In 1965, milk was still delivered to the doorstep and the mailman would knock on the back door and hand the mail to Mamaji. On one of his deliveries, the mailman gave her a packet of letters as usual. It was windy and terribly cold outside and his face was bright red, eyelashes and nose hairs crusted over with ice. Some of his fingers poked out from his gloves and looked dry and chapped. The zipper on his jacket was frozen over with ice and he was unable to pull it all the way up. Mamaji put the mail on the table and beckoned him to come inside. The mailman protested, perhaps he didn’t want to dirty her kitchen floor. But she insisted, and when he sat down in our warm kitchen, she brought him a steaming cup of chai, hot chapatti and sabzi—a spicy, vegetable mixture. He looked surprised, but quickly took off his coat and gloves and began eating and drinking. I don’t remember what they talked about, but I do remember the tone of gratefulness in his voice and the genuine care and concern Mamaji showed.
Mamaji had two great worries about me as a two-year old. One was that I was yet to be potty-trained. She despaired because in India potty-training is usually achieved by the time a child completes the first year. Another worry was that I had been born with a birthmark on my face. It was a white patch that covered the eyelid and skin under my left eyebrow. I wish that patch had never faded and she was still here to rub oil on it. She used to massage this area over and over, hoping to erase the whiteness of the patch. She walked around the house, humming and smoothing my eye, hoping I would soon fall asleep. I felt the warmth of her skin and softness of her sand-colored silk sari, block-printed with many rose-colored leaves. I laid my head on her shoulder and Hannah followed behind, mirroring Mamaji by holding her doll on her shoulder, patting its back and humming. I felt safe, warm, and comfortable. I was with the person who loved me the most in the world.
* * * *
When she knew her death was inevitable, Mamaji made three requests to Papaji. The first was that she did not want to be buried in America. She asked Papaji to take her body back to India, where she could be buried in her home, next to her relatives and family. She loved India, and while she died in a cold, foreign country, she did not want to be buried there. I imagine she must have remembered the frigid Midwestern winters and longed for the warm breezes of her beloved home.
Mamaji’s second request to Papaji was, “Don’t ever sell the Chandigarh house.” She knew it was the only childhood home we would have. When she died, she wanted us to return not only to the physical home she had made for us, but to the emotional stability that home would provide for us. In India, the grief the older children felt could have been lessened by our Nani, Masis, cousins, and all the loved ones we had left behind who knew and loved Mamaji so well. In that home, those of us who had been too young to know her would have learned of her love for us. To this day, I marvel that I had absolutely no contact with Mamaji’s family from the time of her death until I got married. All I knew was that she was born, she married, she gave birth to her children, and she died. I knew no one who had known her before she had met my father.
Since Mamaji’s death, I struggled to find a place to call home. In December, while everyone else is busily traveling, I want to say, “I’m going home for Christmas, too.” But there is no home to go to. Of course, my siblings gather together for Thanksgiving, Easter, a wedding or some other family event. And, we all have our own homes that we have made with our children. But it’s not the same as going to your childhood home. Mamaji is not there to call us back. None of us has ever known that feeling, and she knew we would need the house in Chandigarh.
Mamaji’s last request was one that, as an adult, I see the difficulty in fulfilling. She did not want Papaji to marry and told him to stay single in order to keep the family together. She knew what would happen if Papaji remarried. Even with seven children, they had both longed for another—indeed, it was this desire that had taken her life. She knew Papaji would have another child if he remarried. And she knew how that child would change my life. The truth is that the pull of mother-love is so great that the child who is The Other can never compete with the child from the mother’s body. She did not want any of her children to be The Other. In a struggle between the two, a woman will show mother-love to the child of her womb and a watered- down sort of tolerance for The Other. Oh, it will be subtle, it will be discreet, it might even be imperceptible to her husband, but it will be there. And Mamaji was right. It was the one decision that changed my life forever and destroyed whatever semblance of a home I had. I have always been The Other. At the moment my father remarried, I lost all that was dear to me—the little I had left of Mamaji, a relationship with Papaji, and my hope for a real home.
I wonder about these last three requests Mamaji made. She could have written a will or even asked her older children to promise to carry out more selfish requests. She could have asked for a memorial in her honor or she could have given us some of her worldly belongings. But what she wanted for all of us was something only a mother could give—a home. In light of how things turned out, I feel an overwhelming sense of loss and devastation as I realize how well she knew me, and how each one of her requests took my well-being into account. She was able to consider not only what my needs were as a small child but she knew what they would be as a grown woman.
Elisheba Haqq was born in Chandigarh, India, but was brought up in Minnesota, USA. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University and currently teaches writing at Rutgers University. Her work has appeared in A Letter for my Mother, Gateways, She.knows.com, and NJ Monthly. A RN by profession, she has also been published in Creative Nursing and Journal of Nursing Education and Practice. She enjoys unplanned travel, black tea, and printed books. Elisheba lives in New Jersey with her family and can be found online @Elisheba Haqq on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Her memoir, Mamaji is available now at your local bookstore, Amazon, and B&N. The Audible version will be available January 2021.
