Praveen Vijh
Photography

Quietude       

Three days before she died my mother entered in her journal “I have finally reached nirvana”.  At the age of 68 she may have felt that calming spirit inside her.  For her, maybe it was simply the absence of disquiet.

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Nirvana (or at least the idea of it) means something different to me now: contentment, satiation, fulfilment, a quiet desire. Sometimes I feel like I lived my mother’s dream before she did. The release of restlessness. 

 

As I am writing this, the sky is the colour of my faded denim jacket from 1984, pock-marked and bleached in places. Countryside partially envelopes my home at the edge of the city.  As I pass through the garden a feint shadow of my mother passes before me as she gently admires the burgeoning lilies and bends to attend an errant weed. 

 

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Ritual                  

It is July, the month that Mother-in-law would have spent here in Epping. I think of her preparing khoya, a painstakingly detailed, time-consuming sweet that she would make for the children she loved and missed. Her spirit still returns now that summer has arrived once more. This year, 2026, is hot but the ghost will still want the winter weight duvet. 

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"Me is going to bed now", she  announces loudly. She starts to ascend the flights of stairs, slowly, laboriously, pausing just briefly at floor 1 to receive her night-time hugs from the grandchildren she adores.

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Attentiveness                              

A friendship with Lyn was a friendship to be deeply seen. I would speak to her as if speaking to a mirror of my life. The most mundane or most profound events captivated and committed to memory. I cast my self-portrait in the refection she offered.

 

There was a question we asked each other - what happens, when we are gone, to all the data we hold, the love buried deep, the cavern of accumulated knowledge?

 

 

I know now from all these women, that they selected parts of their consciousness to bestow upon me. It was not their admired intelligence that they passed on, but their morality, their integrity, their strands of joy and their wise love.