Mother, just like any mother, could not have listened to that news without collapsing. Hence it was our primary objective to hide the matter from her but we did not know how to do it and how long to do it because he was so stubborn about leaving soon. Also, we needed to use her abilities to pursue him to stay back with us and for us. We were also worried that if we did not inform her early enough, she would later blame us for not giving her enough time to plead with him.
Initially for a few days when we were still in the hope that he would change his mind, we made sure she did not know anything. Later on, when we continued to fail in the bargain with him, when we assumed her requests would hopefully make a difference, we begun to let her know the situation more accurately. However, by then, she had already started to make out most of what we knew from our secret gatherings and long conversations.
She later said many things that happened in my bothers early life and how she and our father cared. There was one specific incident when he was affected with severe dysentery and remained in a very critical condition. The family doctor could not locate a nerve to insert the IV needle. Later on, somehow our doctor managed to put him on IV and get his body to respond in a miraculous twist of event just like how life always is. From that story it was clear that she shed much tear over him right from the childhood. Now this was probably just the beginning of a new, long, tearful journey of her life, agonizing over her dear child.
So many people leading material life lead such a life in spite of enormous hardships. They all do not suicide or chose a spiritual way of life. Our brother in spite of not being faced by any visible obstacles in life, choose to renounce it. Truly, I wished to know what went on in his mind leading to that decision. It has to be a pull by spirituality rather than any hardships in material life.
Months after he left, I used to think whether he would have chosen that path if we were an ultra rich family. Such affluence would mean that he would have been immersed in more worldly pleasures than he had been in an average family like ours. Because I believe these days, without abundant money, you cant really live the life of your passion. May be such a realization stuck him, I do not know. These are all though, hypothetical questions which does not make great sense.
You may be wondering whether my mother curse him or bless him these days. Do not think for a moment; like all mothers, she would have forgiven him for his abandonment of material world and for going away from her. No doubt also that she is going through frequent tremors thinking about him because mothers can not have a mind of a rock or hate her children whatever they had done to hurt her feelings. If rest of us can not handle those tremors; how can she possibly?
But to my bewilderment, I do not know what I shall do when on one day she asks me to bring him to her, the one who had abandoned our family.
