Usha Masi

The Delhi airport entry door is made of glass. It shows a reflection. It's me. 

I am a picture of focus. Absolutely clued in to the situation , on the ball. Knowing every alley , every little turn to optimise my time at the airport and be as efficient as possible. 

Where to eat, which counter to go to, which queue to avoid. 

Friends and family look up to me for all kinds of travel advice, from places as far as Patagonia to as near as Punjagutta. My word, is pretty often, the last word on the 6w s of travel. 

I have done many trips for thousands of miles, sometimes just to meet someone for a few hours. 

In Satyajit ray s movie, 'goopy gyne bagha byne ', the King of the ghosts gives three boons - one of which is - jekhane ichcha jaite pari- I can go wherever I feel like. People look at me a little bit like the one who has been blessed with that boon , sometimes with admiration, sometimes with envy. 

However , this piece is not about my accomplishments as a traveller . Nor is it about what people might think of my travels . 

It's about Usha Mehta. My aunt, Usha Masi. My mother s eldest sister. And someone whose skills in efficient travel are far superior to mine . 

About fifty years ago, Usha Masi, became a principal at a Delhi government school. Her brother, my uncle, was living in Calcutta that time. Any weekend that would have a Friday or Monday as a holiday attached to it, Usha masi would be on the train to calcutta. 

If, for example, a Monday would be a holiday, She would board the Deluxe express ( now called Poorva express ) on Friday evening , be in calcutta on Saturday evening , spend Saturday night with her brother in calcutta, and board the Kalka Mail back to delhi on Sunday evening from Howrah station. Back in delhi on Monday evening, morning on to her school next day. 

Did she make her Reservations in advance ? Trains were always crowded , you needed months of planning to get a ticket reserved . That's true even now, but there are more trains , there is Tatkal, and there are flights which are more affordable. 

She would care two hoots about trivialities like train reservations  , and she would just get to the station , buy an unreserved general class ticket, and make her way into the coach like a woman possessed . 

Fiercely strong willed and independent , she would optimise every available minute of her time to be with her family. 

And a strange family it was. 

Usha masi was born in Lahore, in 1928, the eldest of six children, four sisters and two brothers . My mother is the youngest of the sisters and eighteen years younger to usha masi. 

My grandmother, Usha masi s mother was a religious lady, a staunch devotee of Lord Krishna. She would greet people with the words 'Jai Shri Krishna' instead of a namaste . My grandfather was the first person from his district ( Sargodha- now in Pakistan ) to study and pass The matriculation examination . He then went on to passbhis higher secondary examination with flying colours. And then his graduation. And then his post graduation. He qualified for the Indian civil services examination but did not join. His zeal for learning was unmatched. He became an entrepreneur - he set up an insurance business in the early 1930s, and it did great initially. 

Not the one to save money or worry too much about the future , he would earn handsomely over eight months of the year , and blow it all up on travel - often taking his family to Kashmir for the remainder of the year - about four months , and living there in great style . His wife, my grandmother, gave birth to a dozen children. High infant mortality in those times meant only   50 percent of the children survived . The four sisters and the two brothers. 

For a few years, life continued like this. Then, the horrible event of the partition of india happened. The family had to leave everything - their large house on 7 Nisbeth Road , near Gawalmandi in Lahore, all their belongings , all their valuables - and run for life in what was to become India. 

Reaching Delhi after an arduous , life threatening journey across Punjab, the family s life turned upside down. 

After the catastrophe, A start had to be made. The threads of life had to be rebuilt . All rebuilding would have to start from scratch. 

Lahore was where all the network, all the acquaintances were. In Delhi, there was nothing. The good business that usha masi s father had in Lahore pretty much evaporated in Delhi - he continued to stutter from one unsuccessful venture to another . 

The onus fell on Usha Masi - the eldest daughter , to shoulder responsibility . She concentrated on her studies , offered tuitions to younger children , completed her undergraduate Bachelors of Arts studies in English, then her post graduate studies in English literature. She wanted to do more, but the financial condition of the family stopped her in her tracks. She completed an education course and became a teacher. That became The family s first stable source of income in post partition India. And that started to turn the tide . 

Education was, and continued to be , the most important thing for everyone in the family. All sisters and brothers focussed on it. Ramjas College, Mirinda house, Hindu college were some of the institutions the siblings went to . 

Usha masi s job as a school teacher was the primary source of funds for all of this. Over time, her hard work , her grit , her very high sense of discipline and unflappable integrity was recognised and she quickly moved up the ranks. She became a Principal very soon, one of the youngest principals in Delhi at that time . 

at school she got the image of a no-nonsense person, pretty similar to what her younger siblings thought of her . 

In contrast to that image, Usha Masi was her father s favourite . The father daughter bond was remarkable for its mutual respect and love. Sometimes, the daughter would play a motherly role. At other times, the father would mentor the daughter and give her life s lessons - from the Vedas to the Arya Samaj to history of the world. They shared a beautiful bond. 

The Indian tradition makes it almost imperative for father s to marry off their daughter s in the 20s so that she can start a married life and a new family. 

many attempts were made for Usha masi s marriage as well. She rejected every prospective match saying the potential groom was either less educated or less professionally accomplished than she was. 

Then, one match came - an Air Force officer . All was well in the meeting between the families and it seemed things might just happen for Usha Masi s marriage. 

As the meeting was coming To a close , someone cracked a joke . The Air Force officer laughed . Usha masi noticed an artificial tooth - that too gold plated. Hell froze. She refused the match saying the guy has a gold tooth. 

When I asked her a couple of years ago - Why did you not marry - she said - she wanted to take care of the family, and marriage would have certainly come in the way. So, usha masi never married . 

She ensured her siblings did the best they could - education, profession , their families . Her brother became a civil servant . She continued to take care of her father and the father - daughter duo lived a nice life in Delhi. After her father s passing away, she continued to live in Delhi, by herself, living life on her terms . She continued to be fiercely devoted to her brothers and sisters, who were all living in different cities and in different parts of Delhi. 

Her commitment to the family never wavered. It was that commitment and steely will power which led her to make the arduous trips by crowded trains to spend a day with her brother. She was supremely focussed and sharp in navigating stations , coolies, crowds, train timings , connections and most of all, rowdy co-passengers who would often try to make things difficult for a single woman travelling on crowded night trains .

Today, when I am writing this, I am writing after spending a few days with Usha Masi. She is now 88. Her fiercely independent spirit had ensured that she has been living alone for all these years . Until last year, that is. In the last one year ,  she has suffered two debilitating brain strokes . The first one , about a year ago, left her bed ridden and her right side paralysed . The second one, about a month ago, has severely impacted her speech and cognition . 

 A nurse takes care of her 24 hours. Even the most basic of activities like cleaning , washing need assistance from the nurse . 

Her speech has been severely impacted - cognition down to an extent that she is unable to recall her own name on many occasions. The doctor showed me the MRI - he showed the area where the impact is maximum. That is the area from where speech, language and cognition happens. The doctor said it's difficult to predict anything. Some neural connections might get re- wired with the right stimulus , he said. Her overall physical condition keeps getting weaker - she now weighs perhaps no more than 30 kgs. 

 Her condition has trudged along since this event , mostly downwards. Her speech has become incoherent and blurred and the expression of even simple objects like spoon, glass , plate does not translate into the right words. 

At times , She continues to show signs of her steely will and determination - continuing to practice moving her limbs slowly to ensure they retain movement and not get locked . She started re learning counting with me three days ago . We covered upto 10 on day one. By day 3, she has moved up to count up to 29. The only mistake she is making is that in her current world, 28 comes after 29. Big deal ! 

She keeps reciting the Gayatri mantra. We have done a couple of rounds of A,B, C. She repeats. But she does not remember the sequence. 

On another occasion over the past few days, She wanted my favourite food to be prepared. So she said - Maharaj. She meant Rajma. 

Today, she relearnt the spelling of her name USHA. 

I asked her to repeat what I was saying. 

U, I said. She said- U. 

Then I said - S. She repeated . S. 

I moved on to H. She repeated - H. 

I decided to take the chance- instead of saying the next alphabet , I asked her , what next after H ? 

She looked at me for a moment - almost incredulously , as if I was the king of morons. 

A - she said, without any prompting. 

The A - It meant much more than the spelling. It meant a certain rekindling of the bond between cognition and language. 

I cried. And cried. 

That was perhaps the most important A I have ever heard in my life. 

As I get back to my present world , in the queue for boarding my flight after a few days with Usha masi , I cannot but feel overwhelmed by what TIME does to us. One of the most independent and strong willed women I know is battling for survival, she is battling for the A that will complete her name s spelling. 

As much as I feel overwhelmed by what Time does , I also feel a great sense of pride and joy in being able to share some part of Usha masi s journey over the last few years !