Some remedies come without labels… and stay with us for a lifetime.
The other day, my body seemed to revolt all at once.
A leaking nose. Relentless sneezing. A dull headache that refused to leave. And, for good measure, an aching back that made even sitting feel like an effort.
It was one of those days when you begin to suspect your body is conspiring against you.
So, like any sensible adult, I reached for what I believed were solutions. Tablets, syrups, and whatever else sat obediently in neatly labelled strips and bottles. I swallowed them with the quiet confidence that modern medicine brings. Relief, I told myself, was just a few minutes away.
And yet, as I sat there waiting, something else surfaced.
A memory.
Not of medicine.
But of my mother.
I must have been around four.
Calcutta in the 1960s was a world of its own. Loud, alive, and endlessly fascinating to a child. Advertisements were everywhere. Not on screens. We didn’t have those. But on hoardings, in newspapers, over the radio, and sometimes flickering across cinema screens during the interval of a rare and much-awaited movie outing.
And one name had firmly lodged itself in my young, highly impressionable mind.
Saridon.
I didn’t know what it contained. I didn’t know what it actually did. But the way it was presented, I was convinced it could fix almost anything.
And like all children who have just discovered the power of a new word, I used it generously.
A runny nose?
“Mummy, I think I need Saridon.”
A vague complaint with no clear symptoms?
“Mummy, better give me Saridon now itself.”
A perfectly normal day with no illness whatsoever… but a desire to feel important?
“Mummy… just in case… Saridon?”
Looking back, I suspect I was less interested in relief and more fascinated by the authority of the word itself.
My mother, however, was completely unimpressed.
Saridon simply did not exist in her world.
She never entertained the idea. Not even for a second.
She would smile… half amused, half patient… and gently brush aside my very serious medical suggestions.
“That’s not for you,” she would say.
Or sometimes, without even responding to the name, she would simply redirect the moment entirely… as if Saridon and I had never had this conversation.
And that would be the end of it.
No negotiations.
No debates.
No last-minute approvals.
She had already decided what was right.
And that was that.
And strangely… I never felt dismissed.
Because even in her refusal, there was care.
Even in her firmness, there was warmth.
And somewhere, without realising it, I trusted her judgement more than all the advertisements put together.
It’s strange what stays with you.
Not the brand names.
Not the medicines.
But the feeling.
I lost her when I was ten.
Too early to understand loss.
Old enough to feel it.
By then, she had already begun to slip away from my everyday life. What started as an illness turned into long absences. Hospitals that were always far away. Treatments that felt distant, uncertain, and far beyond our understanding.
She spent long stretches away… in Vellore… while I remained in Ernakulam, and later, in a boarding school in Kottayam.
Distance became a quiet thief.
Stealing ordinary days.
Stealing small conversations.
Stealing time we didn’t know we wouldn’t get back.
When she returned after her surgeries, she was… different.
I remember noticing it, even as a child, trying not to stare.
Her head was shaved. A long scar ran across her scalp. At one point, the wound hadn’t fully healed. One side of her face drooped slightly. Her body moved with effort, as if it no longer fully obeyed her.
It was frightening.
But only for a moment.
Because when she looked at me, she was still my mother.
And when she spoke, that same calm reassurance remained.
Today, I understand things I couldn’t then.
About illness.
About medicine.
About how fragile the human body is.
We live in a time where answers are quick. Medicines are abundant. Information is everywhere. We trust labels, brands, compositions.
We trust what we can see.
What we can Google.
What we can pronounce.
But sitting there the other day, with my modern remedies lined up beside me, I realised something unsettling.
None of them felt as powerful as what she gave me.
These days, I’ve quietly returned to something simpler.
Every morning, I make myself a drink. Ginger, turmeric, a bit of lime.
Nothing complicated. Nothing branded.
It’s something we used to make regularly at home during those uncertain COVID days… when we were all trying, in our own small ways, to stay a little safer, a little stronger.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped.
Life returned to normal. Or something like it.
But I’ve started again now.
And for the first time in a while, I felt… better.
And perhaps that is what brought the thought back to me more clearly.
Not the ingredients.
Not the drink itself.
But the memory of how she cared for me.
Because what she gave me was never just medicine.
It was certainty.
It was quiet authority.
It was care without explanation.
She didn’t need to name it.
She just needed to believe in it.
And somehow, that made me believe too.
It has been a whole lot of years.
A lifetime, by any measure.
And yet, she remains.
Not in photographs.
Not in stories others tell.
But in moments like this. Unexpected, uninvited, undeniable.
Moments when a simple cold turns into a doorway to the past.
Moments when a tablet in my hand reminds me of something far more powerful than medicine.
I don’t think we ever stop missing the ones we lose.
Time doesn’t erase.
It softens, perhaps.
It rearranges the pain into something quieter, more manageable.
But it never truly leaves.
Because love doesn’t work on a timeline.
Even now, if I close my eyes, I can almost feel it.
Her hand on my forehead.
That gentle firmness in her voice.
That quiet assurance that everything would be alright.
And for a brief moment…
It is.
Author’s Note
This piece began as a voice recording I had made months ago. Something I never returned to. I came across it by chance while looking for something else on my phone.
Some memories seem to wait for their moment.
With Mother’s Day approaching, this felt like one of them.
P.S.
A few readers may be curious about the morning drink I mentioned.
It’s very simple.
A generous piece of fresh ginger and a small piece of turmeric, both peeled and sliced thin, are added to a mug of boiling water. I usually cover it and let it sit for about five minutes, allowing it to infuse well.
After that, I add a pinch of salt and the juice of a small lime, and have it while it’s still hot.
(Turmeric powder works just as well, and saves your fingers and chopping board from turning yellow.)
It’s strange how these things connect.
This memory also took me back to another story I had written. About a drink my mother used to make from dried sticks and leaves she would buy from a small Ayurvedic shop. If you’d like to read that, you’ll find it in this story.
WORDSOUPS 