“Here.” Raju pressed the slightly damp, soiled 100-rupee note into his mother’s palm, his eyes taking in her happiness at the unexpected bonanza. Guiltily, he looked away, not quite meeting her eyes, and wondered how he would explain this additional expense to his wife.  His mother stood looking at the note, unsure what she would do with such a large sum. She was taught to be a dutiful daughter, a dutiful wife, and an all-forgiving mother to her son. She knew without his telling that this princely amount came at a huge price for her son.

“Too much, Raju,” she tried to give it back. “I have a few loose coins to offer to the Goddess.”

“Keep it,” he said gruffly. “I will be back in some time. You’ll be alright,” he mumbled, not quite meeting her eyes before driving away all too quickly on his rickety old two-wheeler.

Lakshmamma walked into the temple slowly, wondering what brought this sudden change in her only son. He was born after three successive daughters, and she doted on him. She loved visiting this temple, but the disappearing footpath, the encroachments, and the insane traffic stopped her from venturing out. As days slipped into months, then years, she stopped asking them to accompany her. Having lost her husband almost twenty years back, she learnt to live with less. Once, she had asked Raju for some money. She winced remembering the screams from within the house. “And where would your precious son get that money from? He is still repaying the loan left by your husband and helping his sisters whenever they come with a begging bowl.”

Facing the dvija-stamba, she tried to make herself as comfortable as she could on the hard stone steps. She wondered if she and Raju had missed seeing each other when she went around to see the deities in their sanctum.

She watched people offering their namaskarams before exiting the temple. She had been sitting there, watching women offer their prayers, lighting lamps, going around the temple for a Parikrama, and ending it all by going on all fours and touching their heads to the floor to offer obeisance right at the entrance, just beyond the pillar, close to where she sat. Yet none of them noticed the old, Sari-clad woman hugging a cloth bag that had seen better days and clutching a cell phone in her free hand. She didn’t know how to draw their attention, and even if she did, what could she ask? They were strangers to her.

When Raju told her, “I will take you to the temple tomorrow morning as it is Friday,” she was overjoyed.  She missed her younger Raju. Her face softened as she thought of her son and sent a silent prayer to Goddess Durgamma to keep him safe. Her eyes hardened at the thought of his wife. She knew that the younger woman considered her a drain- both financially and physically. She agreed with them when they told her last week, “What use is the house to you in your old age?” True. All that she needed was a few morsels to eat and a place to sleep. She signed over the papers transferring the house to her son. Maybe this visit was their way of thanking her.

She shifted again. She wanted to go to the washroom badly but was afraid to. What if her son returned when she wasn’t there? Wouldn’t he be late for his work if she delayed him further?  Her back hurt. The rugged stone steps were hurting her bottom. She shifted and wanted to get up, but was afraid she couldn’t control her urge to pass urine. So, she sat, trying to keep it within her. Oh, the sin of it all, if she started dribbling. The very thought left her horrified. She was feeling thirsty. Maybe she shouldn’t have drunk the entire bottle of water. If she had saved it, she could have sipped some now and wouldn’t have felt the pressure on her bladder.

She looked once again at the entrance of the temple. The crowd had thinned. The temple authorities closed one of the outside doors, signalling it was closed for entry and open only for exits. She started to feel terribly anxious. Did Raju meet with an accident? Did he call her, and she had not heard it ring? She looked at the blank screen, not knowing how to turn it on.

“Ammamma, we are going to close the temple!” the priest called out, using the honorific to represent a grandmother.  He was busy locking the inner sanctum door. “Not going home? It is almost 1 PM.”

With trembling hands, she handed the young priest her phone and said, “Please, can you call my son’s number? He said he would pick me up after leaving me here this morning.”

The priest looked at the paper with some scribbled digits which couldn’t be anyone’s number. He knew even before he checked the phone, it would be an old, useless phone given to just shut her up.

Horrified that the woman had been here since morning, he called out to the cleaning woman, instructing her, “You can clean later. First, take this elderly woman to the toilet and get her something to eat and some tea to drink.”

As he settled down to wait for the police, he wondered if it was one more abandonment of the elderly or a genuine accident that prevented the son from coming to pick his elderly mother up. He was afraid that she too,  like many others, would spend the rest of her life in one of the fast-filling homes for the destitute, waiting for her son to come and pick her up.