Such a lovely burden

Last night, I had dropped into Cochin's only English movie theatre to watch The Departed, an otherwise tightly spun movie spoilt by a Bollywoodesque ending. As all of us were crowding to buy burgers and fries, one of my colleagues said "Oh, poor thing!"; I turned around to see an old man, say 50 years, carrying, a young man...either severely handicapped or mentally retarded or both. He had pushed him on a wheel chair till the theatre's entrance, lifted the chair with a help of a few bystanders to the landing and from there carried this man, probably his son, up to the 1st floor and further on inside the theatre. After the movie, this old man, he came back...and without any ado lifted the guy again and carried him down...then he repeated the same act till the ground floor. Then he rolled down the wheelchair down to the rick stand, called one of the rickwallahs and lifted the guy again and gently carried him into the auto. As he was putting him into the auto, he did something that most fathers do when kids are trying to crawl under sofas or chairs-keep a palm on the edge so that the kids head doesn’t hit the sharp edge when he/she comes out or goes in...an exquisitely gentle haiku of a gesture...especially so for a 24 year old man being helped into an auto at midnight. Then the old man quickly folded the wheelchair, gave that "nice meeting you folks" smile to all around and got into the auto. Am not exactly too senti a guy, but my vision of Cochin's fishnet bridge may have been slightly blurred as I drove down.

Most people who have not had the chance to closely know someone either handicapped, retarded or bed-ridden would probably shudder at the life of such a person...especially as a son, daughter, brother or mother. But what they do not know is that such circumstances, however painful they continue to be, present infinite opportunities to witness unprecedented love or duty in probably the most selfless forms that one is likely to see. Instead of talking about the immediate family, let me tell you about a mentally retarded cousin that I knew and loved a lot...reputed surname and fancy name apart, she was always called "Kuttima" because she remained "kutti" all her life.

Kuttima was born about a year after me...she was a blue baby and was born with a hole in the heart. Some medical complication resulted in not enough blood reaching her brain or something like that and she became retarded. From an early age, Kuttima was the toast of the town. Every vacation when my cousins came over here or when we went over, Kuttima used to jump onto me the minute she saw me. Her two favourite demands were "5 stars" and "Double Deckers"(extinct brand) and in a very business like manner, after the first jump and hug, she would check out all our pockets to see if we had gotten anything. After this she would remove all the coins from our pockets ("For Safekeeping!", she would insist) and store them away in her stringed purse. By evening, we would have settled into our usual games of hide and seek and whatnot. Kuttima was always on standby mode, conscientously reporting each and every happening back to our fathers and mothers...about how Joe pushed his friend down the drain or Cruz threated to pull out her hair.

Since she was a retarded kid, she had to study at a local school attached to the church. She got till the 4th standard and stayed there. Everyday for something like 10 years, she went to the 4th standard...packing her bags, waving to us and starting off. Like every kid, she had her favourite teachers, "boyfs" who fought to sit next to her and the usual stories about school. Once back, she would teach us "A,B,C" and also make us spell the usual "CAT,MAT,HAT" stuff. Unlike her sister and brothers who grew up, played basketball and wrote the board exams, Kuttima was a permanent fixture at the primary school...she went on to become the class in charge for 5 consecutive years. On days when the regular teacher was absent, Madam took over and conducted the class with the 20 odd letters that she knew existed.

Among cousins, I think I was her favourite...not because of anything else, but mostly because I would fend off my brother who loved to tease her about her short hair, her "4th std" boyfs or something similar...when she came down to our home for vacation, she even managed to pick up a roly-poly 5 year old boy, Narasimhan ("Narsie") who followed her home from the park and joined us for lunch...much to the consternation of his panicked parents who spent some the entire evening searching for him.

It was lovely to see her entire family weaving their web of love around her condition... vacations would be planned around places she could climb or would involve a hefty porter who could carry her if she wasnt well. Extra sarees would be taken along for her to fold (fav hobby -"folding sarees again and again") and extra 5 stars taken to tide over any emergency. During such trips, she was allowed to become her favourite icon "Indira Gandhi"- she would tie up a saree, over whatever else she was wearing and would walk up and down in a very dignified manner...God forbid that she found a ruler, we would be forced to sit and recite "CAT,MAT,HAT" immediately!

Kuttima used to come down with fits and serious one at that...when she was about to get a fit, she would know...about 15 seconds in advance, she would start saying "I am scared, I am scared,I am scared"...so everyone would rush around to make sure that she was seated or laid down where she wouldnt be hurt...balms would be taken out in quickly to rub onto her palms and insole and a rosary would be pressed into her hand...she insisted on taking somebody's hand just before she went into a fit and would squeeze her eyes shut-tight and start sweating...after her fit was over, we would generally cradle her head and point out to people she had kicked or hit...especially my (then)kid brother who then suspected that this was her way of taking revenge! To show off her heart condition to other novices in the family, we would make her lie down on her back and keep a book on her chest...it would jump up and down @ 90/min...jump as in twitch an inch up and down...if u kept ur palm on her chest, you would have thought there was a small, fast engine inside. Later we learnt that because of the hole, her heart had to beat faster or something like that. We have won countless bets against other kids who didnt know about her heart rate...it was just a game, then.

As we grew up, Kuttima's condition became complicated...her fits became more often and she started getting headaches more often...her family also couldnt afford too much of treatment...even though a lot of relatives chipped in, considering her frail condition, the docs decided not to operate on her and put her on a steady diet of tablets. What’s more, somewhere along the way Kuttima physically became a woman...and it became a problem to keep sending her to the 4th standard...so she stayed at home and became the surrogate teacher for many a neighbourhood kid who dropped by for some sweets, "murukku" and a couple of rounds of "CAT,MAT,HAT".

Prayer time was all the more funny because Kuttima would peek around to check if everyones eyes were closed...if they weren't, she would complain. And she was the only one with a rock steady face as an aunt prayed for God to drive away my "pasi pisasu"(hunger devil) or a cousin requested the angels to make sure my brother didnt grow a tree from the grape seeds he'd swallowed. God was more a friend in need to someone like Kuttima and not a mighty being of the angel-filled heavens..."Dear Jesus, keep my fits away from me" was her daily prayer and we fervently prayed along with her. On many long nights, each of us would take a palm or a foot each and rub Tiger balm and keep her warm...she would get very scared at such times, unable to understand what why her body was doing this to her...but she always accepted this with the countenance of one oft acquainted to pain and would soon put this behind her and start laughing at Mr.Bean with my grandma. Between them, they downed hajaar cups of coffee secretly without the rest of the household ever coming to know about it. Only when the servant started complaining of empty cups, did we find out about "the coffee conspiracy".

Sometime during my MBA, Kuttima became quite sick and her condition worsened...I remember that I was in the middle of my bath at my hostel, when a friend shouted out that I had a call from my home...I said I would be out in a minute, but by then my mom had started crying and had kept down the phone. When I went out to an STD booth and called back, I was told that Kuttima had passed away...all of 20 years old, a child in a woman’s body, hopelessly retarded but thoroughly loved. Now you see her, now you don't...that’s the way it was...but for all her sicknesses, 90 beats heart and her consistent fits, she was such an angel of a cousin...such a lovely burden to love.

Next time you see someone like this, you shouldn't see it as waste of a beautiful mind, an innocent body or a scene to pity...such people are a testament of a family's love, the result of parents' conviction and firmly ensconced among such strong bonds that we will probably never come to know of.

God bless all the Kuttimas of the world.