Chapter Five: The Weight of Succes

 

In the quiet town we lived in, the rhythm of life was predictable—until my mother changed its beat.

By now, her textile business was no longer a hopeful experiment. It was a full-fledged operation. Every week, without fail, she would travel to a nearby town to purchase wholesale cloth—saris, dress materials, household fabrics—items that women in our neighbourhood had begun to wait for with eager anticipation. Her name was starting to travel, not just by word of mouth but by respect. People began referring to her as “kapde wali behnji,” or “the sari lady.” It was a title earned not just by what she sold, but by the trust she built.

Her workdays began before the rest of us opened our eyes.

Even on her "market day," when she had to travel out of town, she never skipped her duties. She would wake up before sunrise, tie her hair back, and start preparing breakfast—hot rotis, sabzi, sometimesalso prepare carrot halva if its winter. She made sure we were fed, and she even packed lunch for the day. The scent of jeera and fresh coriander would fill the house as she moved between the kitchen and the rooms, her bangles clinking softly against the steel utensils.

After everyone had been fed and the kitchen cleaned, she'd get ready.

She wore her simplest yet sturdiest sari—one that could bear the dust of markets and the weight of expectation. Over her shoulder, she'd carry a large handbag that looked modest from the outside. But once unzipped, it opened into four large cloth bags that she folded with precision, ready to be filled with textiles. She’d sling them across her shoulders, the weight symbolic of the life she had chosen and the future she was building.

By the time she returned in the evening, the sun would be dipping, her eyes red from travel, but her hands full of new stock. If it was my school holiday, I would go with her. I loved watching her bargain, laugh with shopkeepers, and make decisions quickly—pointing at cloth rolls, touching fabrics, checking stitch quality. She was a force. I learned more from those days with her than I ever did in a classroom.

But if school was on, she never went alone.

Instead, my father would take a leave from work—a rare sacrifice, considering how hard it was for him to get time off. It was one of the silent ways he supported her, even if his own heart carried an ache he couldn't speak of. Together, they'd travel, carry back huge bundles, sometimes even hire a rickshaw to bring everything home. The house, once echoing with emptiness, slowly started to change.

At first, the change was physical.

Our three old, sparse rooms began to fill. First with cloth—neatly stacked piles, sorted by color and fabric. Then came the appliances. A new fridge—shiny and humming. An old black-and-white television, followed months later by a large screen color TV. A radio. Then a cassette player that became the soul of our evenings. Lata Mangeshkar’s voice, playing through soft static, filled the gaps between our conversations.

My mother, once dismissed as just another housewife, was now the provider of dreams. The joy in her success radiated through her skin. Despite the long hours and physical exertion, she seemed lighter. Her success gave her dignity, her work gave her identity. But with every rise, there was a shadow. And in our home, that shadow was my father.

He never stood in her way. In fact, he praised her in quiet moments. “She has strength I never had,” I once heard him say to a neighbor. He was proud—but pride, when laced with pressure, can turn into a burden. In a male-dominated world, where identity was deeply tied to a man’s ability to earn, build, and succeed, my father's failures began to cut deeper.

Each year, he proposed a new business plan.

Sometimes it was a dairy supply idea. Another time, a small printing press. Then, a plan to open a kirana (grocery) shop near the station. My mother always listened patiently. She never shut him down, even when she knew the outcome. She believed in letting him try, because denying him would have crushed the little hope he had left.

She invested in every venture he dreamed of.

And every time, it failed. Not because of lack of ideas—but because he simply didn’t have the time. His job with the Northern Railways started early, and ended late. He had to wake up at 6 am, reach by 8, and only returned by 7 in the evening. Add to that the constant family demands—his mother’s expectations, his sister’s needs, ongoing feuds, and unending family functions. Marriage after marriage in both sides of the family meant emotional and financial obligations that drained him.

And while he tried to balance it all, his heart grew tired.

Then came a turning point no one saw coming.

The tablets he had been quietly consuming—the ones that gave him brief peace, a temporary pause—were suddenly banned by the Indian government. A nationwide crackdown on sedative misuse meant their supply vanished overnight. It shook my father. Without warning, he had no access to what he had slowly come to depend on for sleep, calm, and escape.

I remember the day he came home in a panic.

His hands were trembling. He was sweating despite it being winter. He kept pacing around the room, asking my mother, “Do you know where I can find them? Just one strip? I need to sleep tonight, please.”

My mother, calm as ever, asked, “Why don’t you see a doctor?”

That moment, he broke down.

“I can’t… I just can’t do this anymore,” he whispered.

And so began another journey—one not of entrepreneurship or survival, but of healing.

We were lucky to find the one and only psychiatrist in our city at the time—a calm, sharp-eyed man named Dr. Keshav Ram. A former military doctor turned mental health expert, he had a reputation for being no-nonsense, yet deeply compassionate. When he met my father, he didn’t judge him. He simply asked him to sit, and tell the truth.

Within minutes, my father confessed everything—the stress, the expectations, the shame of failure, the tablets, the fear of not being “enough.” For the first time, someone was listening without expectation. Dr. Keshav prescribed a phased treatment. The banned medication would be replaced with a new drug—Surmontil (trimipramine), a tricyclic antidepressant used for both depression and anxiety.

But that wasn’t all.

He added two more medicines to balance the withdrawal, manage sleep, and stabilize my father’s moods. And my father, who had resisted most help his whole life, finally followed instructions. There was something about being seen—really seen—that softened him.

In the coming weeks, we saw small changes.

The dosage of Surmontil was monitored, and slowly reduced. My father was less irritable. He stopped lashing out in small arguments. He stopped pacing. But a new concern began to rise. He had started to rely on the other two medicines. He didn’t know their names. He just called them “Dr. Keshav’s pills.”

My mother was the first to notice.

She kept track. She’d hide the strips, count the tablets, observe how many he took without supervision. She would consult the doctor in private, sometimes traveling alone and updating him about my father’s progress—or the lack of it. She became his invisible caregiver, as she had always been—watching, guarding, loving without asking for thanks.

Meanwhile, the house continued to grow—not just in material possessions, but in the quiet dignity that came with my mother’s efforts. We were no longer seen as “the struggling family.” We were respected. Neighbors came to her for advice. Customers trusted her. Even the school staff started recognizing us because of the stories their wives told about “the sari woman who speaks so kindly.”

But the real victory wasn’t in the gadgets, or even in the bank account.

It was in the way my mother changed our reality. One thread at a time, one sari at a time, one day at a time.

My father, even in his struggles, knew this too. I once caught him looking at her from the doorway while she was counting her stock in the evening light. He didn’t say a word. Just watched, quietly, like someone watching a lamp in the distance—knowing it might not warm them entirely, but thankful it was still burning.

And yet, his heart still carried a war. Between pride and pressure. Between love and loss. Between the man he wanted to be, and the man he had become.

And as we would soon discover, healing isn’t linear. Medication isn’t magic. And the next phase of our lives would test us in ways even Dr. Keshav couldn’t predict.

But for now, there was hope.

And sometimes, hope is enough.