I Am My Mother's Older Brother

For a long time, it was my fervent wish that my parents would come live with me after their retirement. But my father died, and my mother refused. She insisted on living entirely on her own terms. Only when she became completely dependent in every way, did my wish come true.

I am my mother’s eldest, the one who first gave her the experience of childbirth and of being a mother. All her ideas of how to raise children with care and a scientific temperament she put into practice on me. By the time my sister and brother came along, idealism had given way to practicality.

When I was five years old, her older brother—who was also her father, mother, and best friend—went underground to organise landless peasants to take up arms against landlords. It was a great loss to my mother. She needed to talk about him, and in me she found a rapt and sympathetic listener. In this way, she transmitted to me his ideals, which she shared—justice, equality, solidarity with the poor and oppressed.

Growing up in the small South Indian town of Kakinada, I was keenly sensitive to my mother’s troubles in life. She was burdened every morning with the drudgery of cleaning dishes, washing clothes, cooking. Then hurrying off to college to give lectures in history. When she returned late in the evening, again she had to cook and clean.

In her appearance, she was extremely modest, partly because we had little to spend and partly because she had no time to think of clothes or jewellery. Her personality was a curious mix. To almost everyone, friend or stranger, she was pleasing to a fault. But when it came to confronting social evils, as when she stood up in public meetings to make a speech, she was fierce. Many people admired her: neighbours, her students, my father’s students, my teachers, my classmates, their parents, activists of all kinds. They came to her for solace and advice, and she would always go out of her way to help them.

The year after my mother retired, my father died. She was then 59 years old, and for the first time in her life, she was alone. I flew home from New York to be with her. For once, she wasn’t all smiles when I met her, glowing with delight, saying endearing things, giving me news of relatives and friends, cooking specially for me, boiling water for my bath. She was not the helper and consoler but the one in need of support.

After a few months, I returned to New York. And she prepared to go off to the distant industrial township, where my brother was working as a chemical engineer, to live with him and his family, as Indian widows traditionally do. Before long, I got news that she had left and gone back to Kakinada. Some minor incident had made her feel unwelcome. She went away with her suitcase in the middle of the night and, since there wasn’t any transport from the township at that hour, sat at a bus stop till morning.

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She decided to live on her own in the apartment my parents had bought for their retirement. It was a world in itself. There were five families, two maids, and a watchman. She would tell me all about them on the phone. Though her depression lingered, once she settled back in Kakinada she was more or less her old self. Pleasant, compassionate, gregarious, socially active. In fact, she seemed to be thriving now that she had full control of her own finances—her and my father’s pension. No longer did she have to worry about money, and she spent it as she liked—mostly by giving it away to all and sundry. In India, women live in the shadow of fathers before marriage, in the shadow of husbands and in-laws after marriage, and in the shadow of sons when their spouses die. My mother was a rare exception, and other women envied her for it.

But when, in the years after my father’s death, she came to visit me and my sister in America, she would behave as though we looked down on her. She would take offense over nothing and stop talking for days. And when I went to see her in India, she guarded her independence zealously. She would never let me spend money, never let me help with cooking or cleaning or do anything for her. Whenever we went out, she had to be in charge of where we were going and how to get there. When I bought her an air conditioner, she threw a shocking tantrum. She was cutting onions when I brought it home, and she flung the knife on the floor in a rage.

I blamed my mother’s new circumstances for the changes I observed in her. And when for the first time a serious strain was put on our relationship, I blamed the social and cultural gap that came from my moving to America. I myself had gone from taking pride in my innocence and over-politeness to being firmer and more street-smart, even assuming a typical New York impatience. Also, having left India in search of a freer life—both as an untouchable in a caste society and as a woman in a patriarchal one—I had adopted the American norms of dating and living with boyfriends, which are not common even in big cities in India. Perhaps naively, I never imagined my mother would have any objection. But when she visited New York for the first time, it was over my living arrangements that we had our first big row. She left New York as abruptly as she had my brother’s house and went off to spend the rest of her trip with my sister in Florida.

For years, I had explained the changes in my mother’s behaviour in various ways. I would tell myself they were due to her living alone after my father’s death. Or to the cultural gap that had opened between us. Or a patriarchal streak I had never noticed. Or else a nasty side of her personality, previously hidden from view, had unexpectedly come to the surface and slowly taken possession of her.

When I was first told she had dementia, I was happy to learn she was not evil but merely sick. And yet I could not accept that her condition was as severe or as permanent as I was told by the psychiatrist at the clinic. After her discharge, I saw unmistakable signs of a decline in her faculties. But I still didn’t trust the doctor’s assessments. I decided to restore her cognitive health with proper nutrition, medications, and supplements. I bought her sensory toys, colouring books, small puzzles. It was several months after her first hospitalisation that I accepted that my mother had dementia.

As I took care of her, I had many questions. She would get agitated in the late afternoon and restlessly sit down, stand up, sit down again, and again stand up. What should I do? And how could I stop her talking endlessly? I turned for answers to social media forums for dementia caregivers. I found many people facing the same difficulties, including some who were themselves in the early stages of the illness. Each post would get hundreds of replies offering advice and support.

The problems addressed in these forums were not limited to the needs of the loved ones. As a caregiver, I have experienced symptoms myself, including a total neglect of my own needs, bursting into loud sobs when talking to her doctor, not wanting to go out or meet people or even answer phone calls. Fear of what I will do with my life when I am no longer caring for my mother.

Dementia is a vicious disease that has a cascading effect on many lives. It can spoil relationships and break up families. And of course, it destroys careers and ruins finances. In India, I had the benefit of residing in a poor country dominated by imperialism where medical services and domestic help are, for better or worse, dirt cheap. The aides I employed in Kakinada were allowed only one day off a year by the agency that sent them. Even with the extra time off I gave them (never as much as they asked for or needed), I could afford to care for my mother on her modest monthly pension.

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For all its costs and troubles, caring for my mother has been a source of fulfillment. I spend nearly every hour of the day or night at her side. Ever since she came home from the hospital, she has called me Annayya, ‘dear older brother’. For some time, I would laugh and try to remind her I was not her brother, but she persisted. Once I asked her why, and she replied with perfect lucidity that it made her heart brim with contentment to utter that word. And when she does, I love to hear it. I know she is calling me her protector.

Sometimes now, when she gets upset, I explain to her how she came to forget so many things. I tell her how she began having problems with her memory and difficulty taking care of herself, and how I came to India to help her. I tell her the whole story I have related here, and she listens quietly like a wide-eyed child hearing a bedtime story.

It is like going back in time, but with the roles reversed. My mother, whose own mother died when she was only four, now has for a mother her daughter who chose never to have children.

No wonder she is confused. Last night I asked her, “Who am I to you?”

When questioned like that, she often suspects a trick.

“It depends on the context.”

“What context?”

“From a sociological point of view, you are my husband’s daughter.”

“What other point of view?”

“There is the scientific point of view.”

“Who am I to you from a scientific point of view?”

“You are my mother.”

“No, no ...”

“You are my mother,” she insisted.

Excerpted with permission from Granta 173: India, published in November 2025.

Born in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, Sujatha Gidla studied physics at the Regional Engineering College, Warangal, and emigrated to the U.S. at 26. She worked in software and banking, and became the first Indian-origin woman conductor on the New York City subway. Her memoir Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India was published in 2017.

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