Have you ever misunderstood something for years, only to realise one day that you were looking at it from the wrong perspective?
I think I did today.
And strangely, the answer came from a balcony, a photograph and a mother who probably has no idea that someone was observing her from a distance.
Let me take you back a few years.
During my eleventh our class lost one of our batchmates, someone with whom I shared a classroom, a few conversations and the usual school memories. We weren’t particularly close, but we belonged to the same batch.In fact, just a few days before he passed away, we had spoken in class.He had asked me for some notes. I remember being quite rude in my response. I told him I wouldn’t give them because I was already stressed with my own life and had enough things to deal with
A very ordinary conversation, right?
I didn’t think much about it. I had my own worries, my own mood and my own reasons for being irritated.
But a few days later, I heard that he was no more.
And suddenly, that little classroom conversation wasn’t so ordinary anymore.I remember crying. Not because we were close friends, but because it made me realise how uncertain life could be. Someone you spoke to just a few days ago could suddenly become a memory.
What disturbed me even more was learning that his death wasn’t simply about the accident. There had also been a failure of humanity around him when he needed help.I kept thinking about its About how a little concern, a little kindness and a little willingness to help could matter so much and I kept thinking about my own behaviour.
Why couldn’t I have simply answered him nicely? Why did my stress have to become someone else’s experience of my rudeness I couldn’t change that conversation anymore.
But I could change the conversations I would have in the future.
That day, I made a promise to myself I would try to be kinder to people. I would not allow my temporary frustration to become a permanent memory for someone else. I would try to help whenever I could, listen whenever someone needed me and, most importantly, never forget that everyone is fighting battles that we may know nothing about.I wanted humanity to become a part of the person I was growing into.
But there was another lesson from that incident that I thought I had understood. Turns out, I hadn’t.
A few days after his passing, some of our batchmates visited his home. I remember his mother. Her grief was beyond anything I could imagine.After a few months, we heard that she had been blessed with another baby boy.
And I remember what I thought
How?
How does a family move forward so quickly after losing a child? How does a mother welcome another baby after experiencing such a loss? Does life really change so quickly?
Somewhere, in my immature understanding of love and loss, I thought perhaps she had forgotten her elder child
I know how unfair that assumption sounds now, But that was genuinely how I understood things back then.
I started questioning whether love was really permanent. Do people eventually replace one another? Does time make us forget even the people we once thought we could never live without? Is love dependent on circumstances?
I thought perhaps people simply move from one attachment to another. Maybe love changes, maybe people forget, and perhaps nothing is as permanent as we imagine.
And I carried that understanding for years
Until today,
I had stepped out to visit a medical shop . I am still recovering from my leg injury, so my mind was occupied with my own discomfort and the little things involved in getting better.
On my way, I happened to look towards a balcony in one of the nearby colonies.And I saw her
The same mother.
Today is Ashtami Pujan, if I am not mistaken. I don’t know exactly what she was doing or what the occasion meant to her at that particular moment. But she was standing in her balcony, looking at a photograph.And if my understanding was right, it was a photograph of her elder son.
I don’t know why I stopped to notice it. Perhaps because I recognised her. Perhaps because that old memory immediately came back.
But the way she was looking at that photograph stayed with me.I didn’t ask anyone. I didn’t want to make assumptions about what she was feeling. I simply watched for a moment and moved on
But my mind didn’t move on so quickly.
I kept thinking: What if I had been wrong all these years?
What if she had never forgotten him?
What if welcoming another child had never meant replacing the child she had lost?
We often make such assumptions about people, don’t we? Someone starts smiling again, and we think they have healed. Someone starts a new chapter, and we think they have left the previous one behind. Someone celebrates a festival, welcomes happiness or builds a new life, and we assume that the past no longer matters.
But who are we to decide how someone remembers?
Maybe she still remembers him during every festival. Perhaps his photograph is a part of her prayers. Perhaps there are days when she looks at that picture and remembers the little things nobody else knows about.
Maybe, while the rest of the family learnt to live again, he continued to have his own irreplaceable place in her heart.
And that is when I understood something.
Moving on and forgetting are not the same things.
A mother can love the child she has today and still miss the child she lost. She can laugh without forgetting. She can celebrate without replacing. She can welcome new happiness while continuing to carry an old heartbreak.I don’t know whether she was remembering a particular day, saying a silent prayer or simply looking at a familiar face.
But I know what that moment did to me.
It made me revisit an assumption I had carried for years. It made me realise that I had confused the ability to live again with the act of forgetting.And it brought me back to the promise I made in school.
I still want to be someone who treats people gently, Someone who doesn’t make others feel unwanted simply because I am having a difficult day. I cannot go back and change the way I responded to that request for notes. But I can make sure that the lesson doesn’t end with regret
I am still learning. Even today, while recovering from my own injury, I found myself learning something completely different from what I had expected.And perhaps that is how life works. Sometimes, the lessons we need most don’t come from books, lectures or conversations. They come from people who don’t even know they are teaching us something.
Today, I saw a mother and a photograph.She probably continued with her day, I returned to mine But somewhere between those two ordinary moments, my understanding of love changed a little I once thought people forget because they move forward.
Today, I think differently Maybe we don’t forget everyone we lose. Maybe we just become better at carrying their memories without allowing grief to take away every possibility of happiness.
“I mistook her moving forward for forgetting him. Today, I realised that some people learn to live again without ever learning to love any less.”
Perhaps I just wanted to write this down today because I needed to acknowledge a misunderstanding I had carried for years. I had made my perspective quite evident through my thoughts and actions, but today I realised that I had misunderstood………..the love a mother carries with her
बहुत ही हृदयस्पर्शी लेख लिखा हैं बेटा वास्तव में कुछ भावनाएँ ऐसी होती हैं जिन्हें शब्दों में व्यक्त करना हमारे लिए आसान नहीं होता। आपने उन्हें बहुत खूबसूरती से अभिव्यक्त किया है। सच है, समय के साथ हम आगे बढ़ना तो सीख जाते हैं, लेकिन कुछ यादें और रिश्ते हमेशा हमारे दिल में जीवित रहते हैं। बहुत सुंदर लिखा है बेटा वास्तव में ❤️