Vinita

As said by Vinita

Vinita and I were teaching at the same school in Meerut. Of late, I noticed a change in her attitude. She used to be tired and cranky. One day I asked her, ‘Vinita, any problem, as I find you to be absent-minded? She said that her mother-in-law was not keeping well and wished to go back to Kolkata, but as she had stepped into her nineties and her health was deteriorating, her husband was not too willing to send her alone till he could take leave and escort her to Kolkata.

Vinita, too, could not shoulder this responsibility as the old lady’s age and health couldn’t permit her to take her to Kolkata. She was too weak to travel at present. Here, her mother-in-law showed displeasure in staying in Meerut, far from her other sons and relatives and the place where she was born and brought up; her favorite Kolkata.

After a fortnight, the old lady was hospitalized, and the doctors had little hope, so special care was provided at home by keeping night as well as day attendants to look after her.

Now this is the main part of the story. One morning, Vinita’s mother-in-law took her hand and said, 'Daughter, my father died in the mid-fifties, and a long time has passed, but the last few nights, I find my late father sitting on the chair beside my bed’. In all these 50 years, I have never dreamt of him.’

Vinita discussed this with her husband, and he just brushed away the fact that his mother was hallucinating. But Vinita took it seriously and informed her sister-in-law, who was staying in Delhi, and a few more relatives who were around Meerut and Delhi to meet their ailing mother. She knew something was wrong. In the night, she made sure to remove the chair that was on the bedside, but the next morning, the old lady called her and said, 'Daughter, last night I saw my late father sitting at the end of my bed’.

The next morning, Vinita called me to say that she had taken a week’s leave from school as the old lady was very sick. Believe me, two days later I got a call from Vinita that her mother-in-law had died the night before. When I visited her, she took my hand into hers and tightly held it. ‘Can you relate to what Ma said to me for the last few days’? Yes, I shook my head.

The old lady previously encountered something unusual, and we humans have no answer to this.

Note: However, Vinita and her husband felt sad that they couldn’t keep their mother’s last wish of taking her back to Kolkata.