CHENNAI: Sitting in the tiny waiting room at Udhavum Karangal, the frail looking Pokkisham Ammal kept breaking into tears as she recounted how she had lost her son Sethu, 21 years ago. “After his father died, he said that he would go to Chennai and work as a waiter and feed me,” she recounts. “But when he returned home from the pattinam (city), he was sick.” When a worker with the NGO told her that if she took her son back. She would have to feed him and look after him like a child, she responded with a half-confused smile, “But he is my child, no?”Given up for dead after he went missing from the IMH in Kilpauk, only his mother had hope that her son would return, “When I couldn’t work anymore, my relatives urged me to take his name off our ration card and claim extra allowance, but I never could do it,” she cried. “I knew my son would come back to me.”As the mother was taken to the garden where the 46-year-old Sethu was standing, gazing at a pigeon, her emotions got the better of her. “How could you leave me alone for all these years,” she cried as she forgot her rheumatic knees and ran towards him and pulled him into a tight embrace. She then tried to put him on to her lap, in her excitement; as reported, her son had been mentally affected and had no recollection of the last two decades of his life. In that moment, it seemed as though even the 65-year-old woman had forgotten that all those years had gone by.Initially, Sethu appeared confused and did not acknowledge that Pokkisham was his mother, but the elderly woman was undeterred. “Hush now, don’t say that. Your mother is here now,” she said with reassurance, “Look at me,” she appealed. For the first time he looked at her, and when someone asked ’is this your mother?’ He nodded, imperceptibly almost.The major concern with restoring mentally ill patients such as Sethu, back into their lower-income families was that they would be unable to bear the expenses incurred by their medication, said S Vidyakar, founder of Udhavum Karangal. When asked how the old woman would be able to feed him, she said unfalteringly. “Even if a get a glass of water, that will go to him.” As the mother and son are prepped to return to their village of Muthupatti in Sivaganga district, there is a sign of hope as she got up to leave. While looking away, Sethu gently laid his finger in her hand and let himself be walked toward the office. Pokkisham had a smile that would shame many a precious stone.
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