When life gives you a pandemic...

Yes, the virus is ravaging our minds. Yes, it also means we mostly get to read heartbreaking stories. But it is okay, even necessary, to sometimes read a gentle story of quiet fortitude.

Ayyoo, pambu, pambu!”

I am jolted by a sudden cry from my mother. She sounds unusually frazzled.

Amma is in the room where the washing machine is kept. It is a little alcove overlooking the backyard and enclosed in a metallic grill, with a steel door leading outside. It is by this door that my mother has spotted the snake or pambu, in Malayalam, the language of my home state, Kerala.

A door separates the alcove from the kitchen, where I am, or rather, was making lunch. Peanut, Amma’s faithful Indie-and-some-other-mix breed canine companion is barking and scampering around madly there. Peanut knows something’s wrong. My mother is in a nightie — that long and loose-fitting cape-like garment South Indian women wear at home. I discover that she’s barefoot and, at this very moment, prancing around vigorously to avoid the snake.

“Ma, stop jumping around! Come back inside so I can close the damn door, you’re not even wearing slippers, what if the snake bites you!”

Somehow, I pull-drag-shove my mother and Peanut back inside the kitchen and slam the door.

I am shivering, my heart is racing. I’ve never encountered a snake like this before. My 78-year-old mother, however, is calm again. This is not her first encounter with a snake. Earlier in the year, a greenish yellow snake tried to wriggle in through the alcove grill, but slipped away after a while. Maybe it’s the same snake, trying again.

I notice suddenly that my mother is trying to open the kitchen door.

“MA...WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

“I want to check if the snake has slithered away.”

“What if it is there still? Look, let’s go around the house to the backyard and we can check from there,” I tell her.

My mother is tiny — barely 4’11”. She is so small she cannot reach many of the door/window catches and fasteners in this big old house where I grew up. So she keeps sticks or rods nearby, to prod the doors and windows open or shut. These sticks are coming in handy now. We grab one each and walk through the house. I’m back in my childhood home for the first time since the pandemic happened.

A lonely lockdown

My mother has been alone in Kozhikode, Kerala since March 2020, when India went into lockdown. I’m here in November 2020 because she needs to get a colonoscopy done. She first noticed drops of blood a few weeks previously, but didn’t tell her daughters. Instead, she consulted a doctor friend, who in turn, recommended a gastroenterologist at a new hospital in town. Then, my redoubtable mother donned a face shield, mask and gloves and set off for the hospital.

Amma has a car, but doesn’t drive. She uses an on-demand drivers’ service in Kozhikode. The agency bills by the hour. The founder Babu calls my mother — a retired college professor — ‘Teachere’ (Teacher) out of respect. Well, so does everyone else on this road, in this area.

At the swanky new hospital, a gastroenterologist did a physical examination and felt it might just be a case of piles or haemorrhoids (swollen veins that appear at the end of the anus). But he advised a thorough investigation to rule out tumours and colorectal cancer — given my mother’s age and because cancer runs in her side of the family. “You must have someone with you for the screening; you cannot come alone,” he told her firmly. That is why my mother called me one evening, asking if I could travel to Kerala from Bengaluru to be at her side.

Amma has always managed everything on her own. Without depending on her daughters. For almost 20 years (till he passed away in May 2019, just short of his 90th birthday) she uncomplainingly looked after my father (Achan as we, his daughters, called him) as his dementia progressively worsened. Towards the end, there was a male caretaker to ensure my
father was clean, bathed, ate his meals, didn’t wander off from home and go missing.

In those early difficult years, when my father’s mind was just beginning to unravel, he would demand his daily dose of alcohol. And behave badly if he didn’t get it. So my mother went to the local liquor outlet to buy his favourite Hercules rum. She went because otherwise he would have gone himself. He was already getting lost then, forgetting where he was going or how to get back home.

This was way before ‘social drinking’ even existed as a concept in conservative Indian societies. Even today, a woman by herself at a liquor store raises eyebrows and smirks. Aspersions are cast on her character or lack thereof. Also, in Kerala, alcohol is sold in government-run outlets, not glossy stores like you find in places like Bengaluru. So, picture a serpentine queue of Malayalee men in mundus and shirts, waiting at a nondescript slightly shady-looking government-run alcohol outlet. And my mother — retired college professor, eminently respectable with nicely-oiled hair tied in a little bun, crisply ironed cotton saree and blouse — standing in line with them.

Not once in those terrible, tough years did my mother make my older sister or I feel like we should leave our respective lives, careers and families in Dubai or Bengaluru to be with her. To help look after our father.

My parents were married for 54 years. Towards the end, date, time, occasion, etc., didn’t matter to my father. At my parents’ 50th anniversary lunch, a guest congratulated him on his “50 not out.” My father replied sweetly: “Thank you, same to you.”

Jungle by the highway

My childhood home is by a busy highway in Kozhikode city. Cars, buses, trucks, bikes, auto rickshaws speed past, in a constant cacophony of sound. Yet my home itself is strangely restful. It is huge and far too big for my mother. Given Kerala’s salubrious sultry climate and fertile soil, there are many trees — coconut, banana, mango, jackfruit and custard apple — on the property.

There’s a longish front yard and garden, a car-shed and an even bigger backyard, complete with a sunken well (from which water is drawn for cooking, drinking) and a woodshed where coconut husks are stored.

The adjoining property has now grown into a mini jungle. Every year, the owner would send men to clear the shrubbery and trees. Not during the pandemic though. In fact, all the homes and plots located on either side of my mother’s house are now empty or abandoned — there is hardly anyone around. There is no human activity. So the land is now lush and completely wild. And filled with all sorts of creatures. My mother has often spotted a mongoose strolling on her boundary walls.

This ‘jungle’ looms over my childhood home like a green bower, mysterious and magnificent. And it is here the snake has come from.

A snaking of a different kind

It is the day of my mother’s screening. She has strict instructions not to eat or drink (not even water). We must be at the hospital by 8 am. We set off. I am wearing disposable gloves and a mask. My mother has donned her trusty face shield, mask and gloves. It is hot and humid already. Babu is driving us himself.

At the hospital entrance, nurses in PPE (personal protective equipment) take our temperature. Then the touch-sensitive doors open with a swish as we approach. Two men (clad in the same uniform as the nurses) welcome us inside with folded hands. The place looks more like an airport lounge than a medical centre. There are coffee/tea kiosks, a café as well as a canteen; there are also ATMs, a full-fledged pharmacy and a general store stocking everything from toys to perfumes and household essentials. And escalators everywhere… silently snaking up and down.

First, a rapid antigen test is done on my mother. Then we go to the intensive care unit where the colonoscopy is to happen. Thanks to Covid protocols, only she is allowed inside. I stay in the waiting room.

Colonoscopy is an invasive procedure where a long tube (with a tiny camera attached) is inserted inside the large intestine through the anus. The probe is to help with screening for colorectal cancer (or tumours/other growths). However, the Journal of Medical Ethics advises against the procedure for those over 75 because of the risk of perforated bowels. This is worrying, but a nurse reassures me: “Even 90-year-olds have done the procedure safely at this hospital.”

Sitting socially-distanced in the waiting room, I cannot help but wonder how my mother is doing, with an alien ‘seeing’ tube snaking through her body. Is she in pain? Is she sedated? I don’t know. My mother went inside the ICU at 8.30 am. It is now 2.30 pm. I am just about to go ask for an update, when suddenly, she totters out.

“The procedure is over. The nurses said I can go eat something and then meet the gastroenterologist,” she tells me.

“Did they sedate you?”

“No, they applied a numbing gel before they inserted that tube. It was uncomfortable, but not too bad.”

Amma is a little shaky and drawn, but remarkably enough, otherwise alright.

I give her one of the cheese sandwiches I made that morning.

My aunt (my mother’s youngest sibling) calls just then.

“How is your mother?”

“Well, I just gave her a cheese sandwich.”

“If your mother is eating a cheese sandwich, she must be okay,” my aunt responds.

My mother’s love of things like cheese, butter etc., is legendary in the family. We chuckle. The tension eases.

We meet the gastroenterologist. “Nothing to worry about — no growths or tumours. But you need to avoid getting constipated, eat more fruit and veggies and drink more water,” he tells Amma. Babu drives us home.

I make masala khichdi for dinner — a one-pot dish of rice and lentils and mixed vegetables. I add a little ghee for extra flavour.

“It’s quite tasty,” Amma tells me. And adds: “I don’t think Peanut will have khichdi. I’ll give her some curd rice.” Peanut is all innocence. As if she doesn’t know we are talking about her!

Then Amma suggests ice cream as dessert for us. I am taken aback.

“Are you sure? You’ve had a stressful procedure today, is your stomach okay?”

“I’m fine. And the procedure is done with. Let’s have that ice cream.”

So, we have a chocolate ice cream bar each. To celebrate.

My mother and I have reached the backyard of the big old house I grew up in. From our vantage point, we can see the outer steel door of the kitchen. The snake is there. I can see it’s yellowish green length by the door!

But why hasn’t it gone away? Ah, its head is trapped in a miniscule gap between the door and the floor. The rest of its body is hanging over the threshold. The snake is alive, but stuck. It’s not going anywhere.

My mother is ready to go and nudge the door open, but I tell her, absolutely not! We decide to call the pushcart vendors who park their carts right outside the front gate. These men are there every day, selling a variety of seasonal fruits — oranges, apples, grapes, and big, round sour-sweet nellika (gooseberries). When we approach them, four men agree readily. I cannot see their faces clearly (all of us are wearing masks), but I sense no fear or trepidation, just the eagerness to experience some excitement on a hot and otherwise boring day. A shortish man is in the lead. He says there’s nothing to worry about.

“Where’s the snake? I hope you didn’t harm it in any way,” he says walking towards the steel door. I had wondered briefly if these men would try to kill the snake. Now, I am both amazed and slightly ashamed to hear this vendor — who is, in all aspects, a daily wage worker — talk about why it is so important not to harm this snake, this unexpected visitor in our lives.

We give the men the sticks in our hands and hang back or rather, I hold my mother back. One of the other men is at my side. A true Malayali, he is watching his friend do all the work. But he has some wisdom to impart.

“It is a young snake, a chera (rat snake in Malayalam) so don’t worry. Just last week, there was a massive snake in that apartment building over there.” He gestures to a building that is only four houses away from our compound. He is trying to be helpful. But it is not at all comforting to know there are bigger and possibly venomous, snakes in the neighbourhood!

The self-proclaimed leader, armed with my mother’s stick, pushes the steel door open. Quick as lightning, the snake frees itself. It is so incredibly fast! Like a yellowish green arrow, a blur, it slices across the yard and dives into a pile of coconut tree fronds rotting by the side of my mother’s car-shed. And vanishes, just like that. The talkative man is still talking.

“So there must be a hole or deep hollow under that pile of coconut fronds. That’s the hiding place. But, don’t worry, it is a harmless variety. Snakes are cold-blooded creatures, you know. It’s been raining recently so the snake must have come into the house seeking some warmth,” he tells us. Waving away our thanks, the men stride off together.

Now we know where the snake is. Unfortunately, it is still on the property! Also, given the haphazard state of my mother’s backyard — with piles of debris, rotting leaves, branches and a mountain of coconut husks — it’s entirely possible there are other snakes around!

I am starting to worry and beginning to feel overwhelmed again.

I look at my mother. But Amma is a little distracted.

“That man, he took my best and stoutest stick with him,” she remarks.

We laugh.

Epilogue

I am back in Bengaluru. My older sister, Deepa has relocated from Dubai and is now with Amma in Kerala. The yard has been cleared. The ‘hole’ the snake disappeared into has been closed up. The alcove is now completely covered by a mesh, the height of the threshold has been raised so there is no gap between the floor and the door. The woodshed just next to the well has been cleaned. There was another snake there — it slithered quickly away, no one knows where to though.

Dear Reader,

We would love to hear your stories. Do you have an unusual lockdown tale to narrate? Has the pandemic helped you fight your inner demons? Has it shone a light on a strength you didn't know you had? Tell us in 150 words or less. Send your stories to [e-mail] The best three responses will be published online on our website www.deccanherald.com on May 16. The last date for submission is May 8, 2021.