Mum is shortly due to undergo a valve replacement surgery, and I am filled with mixed emotions, anxiety, fear, hope, and above all, that nagging question: Have I done the right thing?
Because if you ask Mum, there is nothing much wrong with her.
“I’m fine,” she says. “I just get a little breathless. It comes with age.”
But Kiran and I could see what she perhaps did not want to see.
This is a woman who has always been fitter than me. She has climbed mountains in a jiffy, walked at least 10 kilometres every day without thinking twice, and rarely seemed to tire. Gradually, that woman began getting breathless and exhausted after the slightest effort. Even standing long enough to make herself a cup of coffee had started becoming a chore.
During my last visit, I took her to the hospital for cardiac and general investigations.
And believe it or not, she fled from the hospital!
Can you imagine a seventy-something woman playing truant and escaping from the hospital?
Well, mine did.
So this time I decided I was staying in Mumbai until we got to the bottom of things. Fortunately, she agreed to be investigated under the guidance of Dr Hemant Pathare, an esteemed CVTS surgeon whom she has known since our MBBS days. Perhaps that familiarity gave her the reassurance she needed.
And today, she is on his operating table, about to undergo valve replacement surgery.
Even today, during a brief video call, she announced:
“काय ही शिक्षा करून ठेवली मला?”
What kind of punishment have you put me through?
And there it was again. That little stab of guilt.
Where does respecting a parent's wishes end, and where does doing what is in their best interest begin?
Should I simply have accepted her saying, “I am fine,” because it is her life and therefore her decision?
But what would that really have meant?
Watching her slowly lose her independence. Watching the breathlessness worsen. Watching this fiercely active woman struggle with the simplest things. Watching her world become smaller and smaller, until eventually she simply dwindled away.
No.
I couldn't do that.
Perhaps the doctor in me understood what untreated disease could mean. Perhaps the daughter in me simply could not stand by and watch it happen.
Yet when the doctor and the daughter live inside the same person, decisions become complicated.
I tell myself that this surgery is in her best interest, that it offers her the possibility of getting back some of the life she once enjoyed.
But somewhere inside me another voice asks: Am I convincing myself because I need to believe I have made the right decision?
Perhaps some of this guilt comes from living away from her. From knowing that she has been living by herself. From wondering whether I should have been there more.
There are no neat answers to these questions.
For now, I have made the decision I believe gives her the best chance of living, rather than merely existing, and I have stood by it.
There have been many times when I have sulked about being an only child. At moments like this, the responsibility can feel enormous because there is no sibling beside you with whom to divide the decisions, the worries or the guilt.
But life has compensated for that in another way.
I have been blessed with an extraordinary circle of friends. Friends I can rely on. Friends I can bank on. Friends whose number I can dial at any hour of the day or night, knowing somebody will be there at the other end.
So perhaps God has been kind to me in ways I sometimes forget to notice.
And I trust that He will continue to be kind.
Recently, one of my friends said to me,
“It has been relentless for you and your mum, everything the two of you have gone through.”
And yes, sometimes it does feel relentless.
But then my thoughts turn to Kiran.
Because while I have been busy being a daughter, he has quietly carried the consequences.
I have been virtually absent from family life while looking after Mum.
I haven't been there for Akshaj at a time when he needs our support the most.
I haven't been there to sit with Kiran at the end of the day and simply ask, “How was your day?”
In trying to be an obedient and responsible daughter, somewhere along the way I have been an absent wife and an absent mother.
And that brings its own guilt.
Life has a strange way of putting us in situations where fulfilling one responsibility inevitably means neglecting another. Perhaps adulthood is partly about accepting that we cannot always be everything to everyone, however much we want to.
There are moments when I find myself asking:
“Why me? Why me?”
And this is where my Hindu beliefs somehow bring me a little peace.
Perhaps there are things we are meant to go through that we will never completely understand. Perhaps there are old debts to be settled, lessons to be learnt, responsibilities we are destined to carry.
Maybe somewhere in some past life I did something for which I am now repaying the debt.
Who knows?
Because, after all...
Karma is a bitch, you know!
But perhaps karma isn't always about punishment.
Perhaps sometimes it simply places a responsibility in our hands and asks us what we are going to do with it.
So for now, I wait.
And I trust.
कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।
We can only do the duty that lies before us.
The outcome was never entirely ours to control...
MKP
22.08.2026
Jaslok hospital, Mumbai
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