Amma, where are you?

"Here comes the airplane, brrr!!" Rachna's mother, suffering from Peter Pan syndrome, opens her mouth in a kiddish manner, eating up the spoon full of medicines having a bitter taste. "At the age when adults need to swallow tablets, she is struggling to drink syrups! Don't take this syndrome in a usual manner. It's an awful disorder that forces adults to get trapped in their childhood. They have the body of an adult and the brain of a kid. There are precisely no remedies! But yet, we're trying all manners with definite pros and cons to help you and your mother." said the doctor with her daily reports and a concerned way of talking. Rachna always listened to such comments towards her mother, like: 'She can never recover!' 'She is troubling her kid for her kiddish behavior in her kid world!'

Rachna was narcissistic and always had self-importance in an excessive modus operandi. She had disagreements, ignorance, negligence, and conflicts and this had a cavernous effect on her mother. But till the time she realized, Rachna's mother, Shanti, was forgetting all memories she had with Rachna and all she did in her life before the Peter Pan syndrome! "It's just too late!" cried Rachna as she lay on the chair beside her mother's hospitality bed. And on the other side of the coin, Shanti smiled and patted Rachna's spine in contemplation of ameliorating Rachna.

She remembered those evenings when Rachna came home from work, tired and hungry, and Shanti gave her that refreshing lemonade in hankers of an exhilarating complement by Rachna, but she never received it because Rachna used to feel that she never deserved it. But she recovered from narcissistic behavior eventually!

At times, Shanti's memory came back. She used to scream, 'Rachna Rachna' but Rachna herself thought it was her ears ringing. She went to work and missed that tasty Kheer her mother made for her on Saturdays and the regular lemonade she drank to relieve her tedious work! She was tensed, she was offended and grouchy. She eventually had to remove it from her body by relieving her inner anger being buried each day she saw her mother's condition. She screamed at work and eventually lost her job. Rachna's father, Mehul, died when Rachna was a young 10-year-old girl. From then, Shanti was left alone with a narcissistic daughter and her heartbreaking attitude, or whatever you call it. Dramatic? Shameless? Useless on the name of a daughter?

Shanti's condition broke Rachna's heart each day. The hidden anger, fear, and annoyance injured the young lady! And Shanti didn't even realize when she partially recovered due to an inexplicable miracle which I'm still not aware of.

She touched Rachna's dull face in agony and pain and tears rolled down her fair and bubbly cheeks. But who knew? A terrible turn will take up in Rachna's miserable life.

Shanti was fighting liver cancer all the time. She never showed her inevitable pain and lied every time saying that she was OK! But she never was. She told the doctor to lie to Rachna saying that she was suffering from Peter Pan syndrome, but she never was! She never had that potential, nor that courage to tell her daughter that she was in a gut-wrenching sitch. Shanti always lied! She never was brave, neither was she courageous nor was she comfortable telling her modus operandi since she thought her daughter may take it in a bragging manner.

The doctor always was lying to Rachna. Her emotions built up in hope for the recovery of her mother. But when she got to know about it! Her towering emotions fell with a huge 'THADAM!' She always was in hope, but that hope she built fell and huge destructivity was built. Towering Rachna and her emotions. But little did she know, her mother, Shanti was dead. She broke her penance for recovery and the only word she left on a sheet of paper is 'YOU'! She was broken and terribly destroyed. She was in trauma and she cried a lot. She cried day and night and each day, her pillow soaked up her bitter tears and the moon heard her cries trying to calm her down. The stars faded away in spite to hide her tears. And the rain, definitely helped a lot. She finally loved the rain a lot! Since it hid her tears while she walked in the rain with an ersatz smile spread on her face.

And once more, whenever her moments replenished and Rachna realized it, there was only one answer with tears in her eyes and brainstorming with painful cries. "Amma, I'm here!"