What a Parent’s Fear Sounds Like After the Sirens Fade

After the sirens fade.

Monday morning, I peered again. The pigeon’s eggs on my ledge had hatched, two new chicks could be seen, glued to the safety of the wall next to the nest.

For the last two weeks, my once-in-the-forenoon routine had been to open the window, peek, say ‘hello’ to mama pigeon as she stared at me with her round, pink-rimmed eyes, and click the window shut, lest she should think of me as a threat.

I looked at the phone screen, checking the notifications. One message from a niece’s husband who rarely speaks in the family chat group. Since the news broke, my mind has been walking through buildings my child once knew by heart. I was not thinking of events. I was thinking of fear, how quickly it enters a place we once called safe, and how it refuses to leave a parent’s body.

We are a family where many of our children have called Brown University home.

Then I saw a message from my son.

“The weekend was very tough.’

‘Log bahut dukhi hain (People are very sad).’ He went on to say that he could not even think how scared the other children might be feeling.

“How do you go back to the rooms where your friends died or you had to shelter for your life!”

My brain sent an alarm and I rang him. He was awake, we talked about the university shooting incident, both of us mourning.

And then he said, his voice breaking, “Main soch raha tha agar main hota to aap kya karte!”  (I was thinking what would you have done, had it been me!). My body stopped listening to reason. I do not remember what words I said after that to keep the conversation going, to comfort him, plead with him not to think of or imagine such scenes. After what seemed like ages, both of us calmed down and I asked -Khana khaya? Kya khaya, (Have you had your food? What did you eat?) The question that grounds a mother, satisfied, that things are good.

1.The Van Wickle Gates, Brown University 2. Photo: Brown University Facebook 3.The Green, summer break 4. Bronze Bruno
5. A winter afternoon

But apparently, I was not yet grounded. For several hours after the phone call, I kept visualising the condition of the families, friends, classmates, all students, the atmosphere in Brown University. My eyes kept boiling in warm shameless tears, grieving for the loss of safety. The other two members in the household respected my grief, staying silent.

The hard work around admissions, visa, tickets, the memory of tough Covid times, are forgotten with every phone call saying they are fine, doing good. A prayer of thanks too goes to the inventors of audio and video calls so that we, sitting thousands of miles from the spot, can communicate.

As if Pahalgam, Ukraine-Russia, Gaza-Israel are not enough, we humans who come into existence through tough competition for survival of the fittest at every micro-step from conception to the end, must go through deliberate acts of violence!

Yes, it could have been anyone’s child.

My heart goes to the students who now hesitate before doing the most ordinary things: staying up late to finish an assignment, stepping out for frozen yogurt with friends, sitting on The Green in the sun. After what happened, even these harmless rituals ask for courage.

A mother with an unsteady heart, grieves the loss of lives. My prayers go to anyone connected to Brown University, hoping for comfort, justice and healing, and for the physical and emotional recovery of the injured.

Perhaps the two students are now stars, twinkling somewhere beyond our sight.

If someone shrugs and says, ‘humse kya,’ (How does it concern us?) or asks why we sent our children abroad, I have no answer. We all know how fear enters the body when someone we love is late. The truth lands fully only when it is one of our own.

In this time of grief, the mama pigeon gives me courage. She has been sitting over the chicks, giving them her body’s warmth till they grow up and fly into the big world carrying only the weight of their own destiny.

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On selective compassion

In their wisdom, some dwellers in our residential complex decided that God needed His own house within the premises. Presumably, they already have designated corners for Him in their three-or-four-bedroom flats. They chose a spot which earlier served as the garbage collection area, and are now building a lavish two-room ground floor home for the Omnipresent. Donations have been generous.

The two labourers building this house, however, live under the scanty cover of a plastic sheet. In dew-heavy nights and foggy mornings, they sleep exposed to winter.

There are no rooms for them, of course. The lobbies are “inappropriate”, the vast basements, lined with expensive cars, remain unavailable.

The residents are deeply compassionate. Unconcerned about disease, they scatter birdseed daily for the pigeons flocking the roof behind our flat. They also feed and pet eight unwashed, unvaccinated stray dogs who roam the complex with a greater sense of ownership than any of us. Some even lay rice husk and blankets on car bonnets for the dogs.

But humans can fend for themselves, can’t they?

                                                                                                   - Anupama S Mani