Celebrating Dr. Shanta. A decade later.

Basics

oi-Staff

By Super

Tuesday, May 8, 2012, 9:35

It was June of 1995. My husband and I had traveled to British Columbia in Canada on a ten-day long vacation from San Jose, California. Those were the days when cell phones were not as popular. I called my parents in Mysore, India and told them I would be back on June 8th and would call them upon my return. My mother sounded excited and upbeat as always. She had a distinct laugh that resonates in my years to this day.

On the third day of our trip, we woke up very early to catch a ferry to get to Victoria Islands from Vancouver Canada. On the deck of a huge ferry overlooking the ocean we ordered pancakes. It was around 11.A.M. and as the breakfast arrived, I had lost my appetite. I didn't eat. I knew something was wrong. I told my husband we need to return home. He looked at me puzzled. It takes a lot for an over-enthusiastic person like me to feel home sick. "Home?" he looked at me and continued, "San Jose? Or India?" I don't know but we need to get back to San Jose first." And we did. Returned to Vancouver that evening and drove to Seattle, changed our plane tickets and flew back to San Jose.

As I walked into the apartment my phone was ringing. I picked it up and my father at the other end was just as surprised as he didn't expect me to answer the phone.
He handed it to a friend and I spoke first, "Did Amma pass way?"

For an atheist like me it has taken years to come to terms that I experienced something like this. I still can feel the way my stomach knotted at 11A.M. that morning, the same time she passed away in India, at 62, of a massive heart attack.

Shanta was her name yet no one called her by that name. Her family called her Shanti, to the rest of the world she was Doctor or Shanta Aunty. Amma to me, she was tall, wheat complexioned and athletic. She played tennis till her last days, in a crisp, starched cotton saree and white sneakers-which my sister and I thought was funny; and often Amma criticized us for taking strolls and being lazy as youngsters while at her age she played an active game. She drove a grey fiat all her life, the same second hand car my parents had bought in 1964 when my sister was born. We poked fun at is as "Oldy goldy car", but she didn't seem to have a problem with a car that had a "great engine."

Amma had a smile that came from her heart. She was happy for everyone for everything. A three year old once insisted 'Shanta Aunty' had to be at her school day to watch her dance. She was there. Children of all ages connected with her instantaneously and so did adults; she was a dear friend to one and all. She worked as the Chief Medical Officer in the Mysore University hospital and invariably knew all her patients by name.

One day I stopped at her work place to drop off the house keys and she was standing outside the hospital in front of a car. She gleamed when she saw me, "Come! Look! Sridhar bought a car." Buying a car in India those days was a true symbol of financial success and a huge upgrade from a Vespa scooter and he knew no one other than 'doctor' would be so excited for him, and to this day I can hear how happy she was for Sridhar. Be it a daughter's wedding, an admission to college or purchase of a new home, people lined up at the hospital with other patients and waited their turn with a box of sweets to share the news and invariably she was the first to know! She would relay the news to us with an astounded voice like this has never happened to anyone before.