My mom recently had gone to see my brother staying some ten thousand miles away from home. After a nice stay while she was just setting on her return journey, and while bro’ was still alongside her, she fell down and hurt her right elbow. She was afraid as she would be traveling for about eighteen hours all by herself now with some pain in her right hand.

I stay about five hundred miles away from my parents. Mom had decided to stay with me for a few days before returning home. Incidentally I was away from my home when she arrived and my better half took her to the doctor the next morning for a check up of her injured hand. X-ray reports revealed there was nothing to worry and the pain was gone by the time I returned home.

Next evening, after dinner as I enquired her of the state of her hand, she gave a half smile as she fumbled for words. She was to leave my home after one more day. I repeated my query. And got this dreary revelation – she had fell down again that afternoon only to injure the same right elbow and this time a bit seriously which became obvious once she removed the veil of her saree’s pallu with which she had kept it hidden the whole evening, thinking she would manage the pain for a day by taking some analgesic, would not disclose it to me and her son-in-law and start treatment after returning home rather than create chaos in our lives after already having created some when her son-in-law had to take her to the doctor the other day!! Just look at how humble our parents become, whereas they could simply enjoy our services at such times!!

Next morning I took her to the doctor. And, won the opportunity of a lifetime to serve my mom for next two weeks. I won that at the cost of her pains of course. Her elbow was so hurt that it could not have been mended without an hour long operation and some steel being wired & bolted into it immediately! And there was my mom going to experience the first surgery of her lifetime away from her husband, after enough convincing by me and my husband that why to put all the trouble on dad alone who’ll have to take up so much pressure and running around when two young people are already made available at her service. Also she was definitely going to get better medical facilities in this city than our native place. She gave in only after dad agreed.

Few days after the successful operation when a colleague was enquiring how Ma was doing and who was the doctor, he was almost awestruck at how we managed to get the appointment of that doctor for whom the normal waiting time is about three months! Another friend made similar remark. Ma and we were delighted that without becoming aware of the fact Ma got to be treated by a top orthopedic surgeon of the city. Whereas to my mom the said doctor appeared to be like a messiah who surprised her not only by talking in her mother tongue but also divulging that he happened to get his college education at our native place!

Ma left for her home after two weeks, reasonably satisfied and without cursing at the sky for once that why it had to happen to her. Even I was reasonably happy.

Role of the Supreme Being in the whole event:

1. Not letting mom hurt her elbow the way it hurt the second time, in the first time itself  while still in the foreign land. Cancelling or changing the itinerary involving ten thousand miles in the eleventh hour would have been much different and difficult from doing it for five hundred miles.
2. What could have been the cost of treatment in a foreign land or rather the formalities involved remains a question.
3. Dad, who himself is not keeping very well these days, was relieved of the pressures and tensions of handling the episode alone. And although neither bro’ nor me stay with our parents, a child was with her at the time of need.
4. Ma gets quality medical treatment and has the mental satisfaction of getting to be treated by a top surgeon for whom people otherwise wait for months for an appointment and who can communicate in a language Ma understands best. Her physical pains seemed to have reduced to some extent simply because of the confidence developed in her mind.
5. I get a purpose to my otherwise routine life – of becoming help to my parents in their hour of need. If the incident would have happened after mom left my place, I doubt whether I could have managed to visit her!
6. And the final interpretation –

Somehow I had always felt throughout my teenage and even later, that probably I wasn’t mom’s favourite. And wished that whenever she would be in need of help of any of her child (I have a sister also) at any point of time in her life, I should be getting the first chance! She should be made to depend on me…………. which came true. Today she has a different view of me. And Ma too did not miss out in acknowledging that this daughter of hers has done her part. According to her next time the chance should go to the others. Though I don’t agree with that one, I thanked my God for the order in which He made the events to take place thereby lessening everybody's hardships.