Sumi During My Cancer
My Cancer Story would not be complete without Sumi It only took one look. Wide eyes, fixed on you, not a word spoken. No reprimand, no raised voice — just those eyes. And every one of us knew exactly what it meant. We understood, and we got on with it.
That was Sumi. Our eldest sister, Sumitra, though she was much more than that. Over the years she became our mentor and our second mother.
She was an avid reader and a superb cook. I can still picture her in her favourite seat on the sofa, her pet parrot on her shoulder, working through a Sudoku or a word search. She collected recipes from newspapers and magazines over the years, and all of us were her guinea pigs! Spicy, sweet or savoury, it was cooked to perfection. But the food was never really the point. Everything she did, she did with love.
Education came first in her world, and so did standing on your own two feet. She taught us household chores, small sewing repairs, how to cook simple food, so that one day we could take care of ourselves. You wouldn’t associate Sumi with sport, but she played hockey for her school, and badminton too. I remember all of us, siblings and the neighbours’ kids, playing in our yard.
There was something the younger ones never knew. Sumi was born with some defect in her legs. I don’t know the name of the condition. But I remember a photo of her legs bandaged, and I found out later it was to straighten them. She never let on. She just got on with life, and it turned out well in the end. That was Sumi. Whatever she carried, she carried quietly.
I could write about her endlessly. But it was during my cancer, and during Harsha’s illness, that I really understood who she was.
In 2005, Harsha had a mini stroke — a TIA, they called it then. In the months after, something changed in the way she understood the world. She would hear how other people addressed someone, and take that name as her own. If she heard our son Mitesh called “Miteshbhai” — brother — then to Harsha he became her brother. Our daughter Rakhi became “Rakhiben,” a sister. Sumi, her sister-in-law, became “Sumifaiba” — aunt. My brother became an elder uncle. The whole family rearranged itself in Harsha’s mind.
And she called me Dad. People tried to correct her, again and again. I never did. I called her Mum, right to the end. I still do, when I talk to my children.
The first time Harsha called her “Sumifaiba,” at Sumi’s own house, was strange for all of us. None of us understood it — not Sumi, not Kishore her husband, not me. We put it down to a mind thing after her stroke, and accepted it. But I’ll never forget Sumi’s reaction. She didn’t correct her. She didn’t make it about herself. She just accepted her new name, and loved Harsha the same as always. To watch Sumi and Kishore afterwards, and the feelings that came with it, is something I have never forgotten.
That was Sumi. Faced with something none of us understood, she just took it in her stride.
When my own diagnosis came in 2007, she was ever present. Harsha needed someone she could talk to, and Sumi’s house became a place we visited often, sometimes at short notice. Sumi never refused. And she was doing all this while battling her own health, and nursing Kishore through his. You would never have known it. She was there for me, for Harsha, for her family, for anyone who needed her. She was just there. Always.
Sumi passed during the first COVID lockdown. Losing someone in those days was hard — the distance, the restrictions, the things that couldn’t be done at the time. We have since been able to do right by her, but I’ll come to that later.
For now, I just want to remember her as she was. One look. Wide eyes. No words needed. A sister who carried her own troubles quietly, and spent her life making sure everyone around her was looked after.
She was our eldest sister. She was our second mother. And she is missed, every single day.
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