This is a post about my mother, a continuation of the 'people I love, and people who love me' series.
As a child, I always thought I would be very different from my mother. She always seemed too strict, too particular about cleanliness, too bothered about the way things were kept or done. I always used to think "What's the big deal if the bed sheet hangs a little lower to the left". Haha. But I have grown up to be the woman who is an exact replica of hers. Not as amazing of course, but very close to being a clone when it comes to habits and peculiarity. I am extremely extremely sensitive to the angle in which the cushion is propped on my bed and the very very finicky about how well the curtains are closed. So much so, that I wake up in the middle of night, because I know I haven't closed the curtains properly, and it bugs me to the point where I can't sleep. Yes, I'm kind of mad like that.
My mother, is the rock in my life. She drives me mad sometimes. I feel like screaming when I am on the phone with her sometimes, but I could never go without talking to her everyday. I think that holds true for everyone in my immediate family. My father and my brother find themselves unable to function when she is not around. And like all families we take her presence and her love and effort for granted. Thankfully, as we grow older and more close knit as a family, we are beginning to appreciate her more and more for everything she has been in our lives.
She grew up with three brothers, all older, in Coorg, with her parents in a coffee estate. Sometimes when she narrates stories from her childhood, you'd think that it's just too surreal to be true. The miles they used to walk to get to the bus stop to catch a bus to school. Or the comics they would buy for 10 paise at the bus stand, when their father gave a little extra money than required for the bus fare. Or the way she used to go hunting for mushrooms in the estates with her brothers. Or the competition for who would pick the most oranges. It's delightful. The childhood she had seems like a dream, magical and like i said almost unreal. To live like that now is close to impossible. She talks about how they used to celebrate Puttari, which is a harvest festival in Coorg and is as big as Diwali. Her father would buy fire crackers for her and her brother and also for all the kids of the estates workers who used to live in the quarters, often referred to as "lines" in Coorg. She talks about all her cousins coming to stay at my grandparents house for summer vacations and how even though it was a small house, there was always place for guests and always extra food ! Her father, my late lovely grandfather used to work in the Coffee Inspection Board and would come home only on weekends when she was very young, before he retired and converted to being a full-time coffee planter. She was his favorite. He always liked girls ! I was his favorite grandchild :) My mother was also the most responsible one, he used to say. So whenever there was a bank cheque to be deposited or money to be deposited, he always gave it to her and not her elder brothers. Of her three brothers, she is closest to the one who is the youngest and just before her. Her elder brothers, much older, shifted to Bangalore for high school and college, and so though she is close to them, she doesn't have the same bond that she has with the third brother.
From her younger days itself, she loved to cook and bake, I guess we all get that from my grandmother. She grew up watching her mother make jams from the oranges the kids plucked from the estates to baking cakes in her earthen fireplace. Living in the estate, with workers from all over the south, also got her to learn many south Indian languages. So she can speak in Tulu, Malyalam, Kannada, Coorgi, Tamil, Hindi and English. When she got married, she wasn't too comfortable with Hindi, but she learnt and how! All the Hindi I and my brother learnt in school is thanks to her. People say Aiyappa, my brother and I have a brilliant handwriting, also thanks to my mother. It might sound brutal now, but I remember her sitting next to us with a scale in her hand, threatening to hit us if we didn't roll our R's and S's properly. Haha. She very rarely did, but that fear got us to learn properly. We hated mugging and could never do it. Even today. She would break it down to the simplest point and then build it up to the larger picture, with every subject. Both of us, have a habit of writing and studying. For all exams, we would have hand written notes and then notes on the notes for last minute revision. If we didn't write it and understand it, we would never learn. We were never #1 students, but then that hardly judges how much you learnt in school, thankfully :)
It must have been tough for her initially to travel around with Dad. Get used to packing every 2 - 3 years and shift to a completely different place with completely new people. But she did it and with such majestic success. She was also lucky to find two friends early on in her marriage. Wives of my fathers course-mates and friends in the Army. They are still in touch today and we all grew up knowing them and loving them as you would love and cherish your extended family. They all married at the same time, had their first child and second child at the same time, so the kids also got to know and love each other and we are all friends even today. Even though we never lived together other than in our early toy-school going years, because our parents made the effort, we never really felt out of touch when we met after long periods of time.
My mother taught me the importance of being independent. In everything you do in life. From knowing how to make your own bed to knowing how to handle money and success and failure. She also taught me the important of knowing when to depend on someone and when to be self-reliant. Small lessons that she taught me hold me in good stead today. When I meet some folks who don't have the basic manners or know-how about conducting their daily lives or have the decency or courtesy to talk to those less fortunate than us, I realise the small lessons that my parents, especially my mother, taught me were so important. And things i had taken for granted as a child. I assumed that all parents taught these things to their kids, but no, ive met people who have no clue how live their daily lives and need a help or a maidservant to be at their every beck and call. Its sad, really. My brother and I weren't made to sit down and taught "how to be a good person", but it is what we observed around us, and in our parent's behaviour towards each other, towards others and towards us, that taught us these things.
My mother and I often disagree on things. Actually we disagree more than we agree i think. We've had our share of my crying and fighting and teenage fears about how "she is not understanding what I'm going through" but everyone, all mothers and daughters, go through that. We look back sometimes and realise that even in those times, we were each other's biggest and strongest and most reliable support. She taught me about faith and about how to look to God not only in our tough times but also to thank him in our happy times for all that he has given us and all that we have that many unfortunate people in our country and in the world don't. She made me fall in our with the magic of the movie world and with ShahRukh Khan. As a child, I would sit on the kitchen-top and watch her cut and chop vegetables and cook and I would be the background music, singing all new and old songs.
When I was in the second year in college, she had an operation and had to be admitted in the hospital for a few days before and a few days after the operation. It has to be the most painful time for us as a family. When I say she is the rock in my life, i mean it, I really do. She is the thread that connects the different beads in the family to each other. I have an independent father-daughter relationship with my father, but that has developed off-late. He would always be travelling for work and sometimes be posted in areas where we couldn't join him, so my in our early childhood years, my brother and I were closer to my mother. So in those few days when she was in the hospital, it was almost like life had stopped. There was pin drop silence in the house at times. We were silent on the dining table as well. Almost like we were eating, only because one had to eat to stay alive. When she came back, we all heaved a sigh of relief and couldn't thank God enough. It was also the time we got our dog Kuttapa home :)
People used to say I look like my father, they still do. And it is true as well. But for the first time someone looked at my mother's picture yesterday and said, "you have her eyes and smile" and my joy knew no bounds. I was ecstatic, thrilled to be able to be like her in a small way.
I can go on and on about my mother. But I'll end with this, my mother and I are friends now, every close friends, and understand each other really well. Sometime back, we were all going through a tough time in the family, each that their individual troubles and then there were a few, like my grandmother's illness, that afflicted the whole family. In those times, one evening, I called her and as soon as I heard her voice, I broke down and she heard me cry and also started crying. And we just cried alone but still together. There in between those tears, we found a bond that wasn't like any other that we had in all these years. We understood each other without saying a word.
She gives me the courage to weather any storm, to try and be good in the midst of all the bad that surrounds us. To try and do good to others and to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I've tried to be good and be brave and to choose the right path among the many wrong ones, and I know I have failed, in more than 1 occasion. Some that she knows about, some that she is completely clueless about. But I know, she will always love me unconditionally.
As a child, I always thought I would be very different from my mother. She always seemed too strict, too particular about cleanliness, too bothered about the way things were kept or done. I always used to think "What's the big deal if the bed sheet hangs a little lower to the left". Haha. But I have grown up to be the woman who is an exact replica of hers. Not as amazing of course, but very close to being a clone when it comes to habits and peculiarity. I am extremely extremely sensitive to the angle in which the cushion is propped on my bed and the very very finicky about how well the curtains are closed. So much so, that I wake up in the middle of night, because I know I haven't closed the curtains properly, and it bugs me to the point where I can't sleep. Yes, I'm kind of mad like that.
My mother, is the rock in my life. She drives me mad sometimes. I feel like screaming when I am on the phone with her sometimes, but I could never go without talking to her everyday. I think that holds true for everyone in my immediate family. My father and my brother find themselves unable to function when she is not around. And like all families we take her presence and her love and effort for granted. Thankfully, as we grow older and more close knit as a family, we are beginning to appreciate her more and more for everything she has been in our lives.
She grew up with three brothers, all older, in Coorg, with her parents in a coffee estate. Sometimes when she narrates stories from her childhood, you'd think that it's just too surreal to be true. The miles they used to walk to get to the bus stop to catch a bus to school. Or the comics they would buy for 10 paise at the bus stand, when their father gave a little extra money than required for the bus fare. Or the way she used to go hunting for mushrooms in the estates with her brothers. Or the competition for who would pick the most oranges. It's delightful. The childhood she had seems like a dream, magical and like i said almost unreal. To live like that now is close to impossible. She talks about how they used to celebrate Puttari, which is a harvest festival in Coorg and is as big as Diwali. Her father would buy fire crackers for her and her brother and also for all the kids of the estates workers who used to live in the quarters, often referred to as "lines" in Coorg. She talks about all her cousins coming to stay at my grandparents house for summer vacations and how even though it was a small house, there was always place for guests and always extra food ! Her father, my late lovely grandfather used to work in the Coffee Inspection Board and would come home only on weekends when she was very young, before he retired and converted to being a full-time coffee planter. She was his favorite. He always liked girls ! I was his favorite grandchild :) My mother was also the most responsible one, he used to say. So whenever there was a bank cheque to be deposited or money to be deposited, he always gave it to her and not her elder brothers. Of her three brothers, she is closest to the one who is the youngest and just before her. Her elder brothers, much older, shifted to Bangalore for high school and college, and so though she is close to them, she doesn't have the same bond that she has with the third brother.
From her younger days itself, she loved to cook and bake, I guess we all get that from my grandmother. She grew up watching her mother make jams from the oranges the kids plucked from the estates to baking cakes in her earthen fireplace. Living in the estate, with workers from all over the south, also got her to learn many south Indian languages. So she can speak in Tulu, Malyalam, Kannada, Coorgi, Tamil, Hindi and English. When she got married, she wasn't too comfortable with Hindi, but she learnt and how! All the Hindi I and my brother learnt in school is thanks to her. People say Aiyappa, my brother and I have a brilliant handwriting, also thanks to my mother. It might sound brutal now, but I remember her sitting next to us with a scale in her hand, threatening to hit us if we didn't roll our R's and S's properly. Haha. She very rarely did, but that fear got us to learn properly. We hated mugging and could never do it. Even today. She would break it down to the simplest point and then build it up to the larger picture, with every subject. Both of us, have a habit of writing and studying. For all exams, we would have hand written notes and then notes on the notes for last minute revision. If we didn't write it and understand it, we would never learn. We were never #1 students, but then that hardly judges how much you learnt in school, thankfully :)
It must have been tough for her initially to travel around with Dad. Get used to packing every 2 - 3 years and shift to a completely different place with completely new people. But she did it and with such majestic success. She was also lucky to find two friends early on in her marriage. Wives of my fathers course-mates and friends in the Army. They are still in touch today and we all grew up knowing them and loving them as you would love and cherish your extended family. They all married at the same time, had their first child and second child at the same time, so the kids also got to know and love each other and we are all friends even today. Even though we never lived together other than in our early toy-school going years, because our parents made the effort, we never really felt out of touch when we met after long periods of time.
My mother taught me the importance of being independent. In everything you do in life. From knowing how to make your own bed to knowing how to handle money and success and failure. She also taught me the important of knowing when to depend on someone and when to be self-reliant. Small lessons that she taught me hold me in good stead today. When I meet some folks who don't have the basic manners or know-how about conducting their daily lives or have the decency or courtesy to talk to those less fortunate than us, I realise the small lessons that my parents, especially my mother, taught me were so important. And things i had taken for granted as a child. I assumed that all parents taught these things to their kids, but no, ive met people who have no clue how live their daily lives and need a help or a maidservant to be at their every beck and call. Its sad, really. My brother and I weren't made to sit down and taught "how to be a good person", but it is what we observed around us, and in our parent's behaviour towards each other, towards others and towards us, that taught us these things.
My mother and I often disagree on things. Actually we disagree more than we agree i think. We've had our share of my crying and fighting and teenage fears about how "she is not understanding what I'm going through" but everyone, all mothers and daughters, go through that. We look back sometimes and realise that even in those times, we were each other's biggest and strongest and most reliable support. She taught me about faith and about how to look to God not only in our tough times but also to thank him in our happy times for all that he has given us and all that we have that many unfortunate people in our country and in the world don't. She made me fall in our with the magic of the movie world and with ShahRukh Khan. As a child, I would sit on the kitchen-top and watch her cut and chop vegetables and cook and I would be the background music, singing all new and old songs.
When I was in the second year in college, she had an operation and had to be admitted in the hospital for a few days before and a few days after the operation. It has to be the most painful time for us as a family. When I say she is the rock in my life, i mean it, I really do. She is the thread that connects the different beads in the family to each other. I have an independent father-daughter relationship with my father, but that has developed off-late. He would always be travelling for work and sometimes be posted in areas where we couldn't join him, so my in our early childhood years, my brother and I were closer to my mother. So in those few days when she was in the hospital, it was almost like life had stopped. There was pin drop silence in the house at times. We were silent on the dining table as well. Almost like we were eating, only because one had to eat to stay alive. When she came back, we all heaved a sigh of relief and couldn't thank God enough. It was also the time we got our dog Kuttapa home :)
People used to say I look like my father, they still do. And it is true as well. But for the first time someone looked at my mother's picture yesterday and said, "you have her eyes and smile" and my joy knew no bounds. I was ecstatic, thrilled to be able to be like her in a small way.
I can go on and on about my mother. But I'll end with this, my mother and I are friends now, every close friends, and understand each other really well. Sometime back, we were all going through a tough time in the family, each that their individual troubles and then there were a few, like my grandmother's illness, that afflicted the whole family. In those times, one evening, I called her and as soon as I heard her voice, I broke down and she heard me cry and also started crying. And we just cried alone but still together. There in between those tears, we found a bond that wasn't like any other that we had in all these years. We understood each other without saying a word.
She gives me the courage to weather any storm, to try and be good in the midst of all the bad that surrounds us. To try and do good to others and to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I've tried to be good and be brave and to choose the right path among the many wrong ones, and I know I have failed, in more than 1 occasion. Some that she knows about, some that she is completely clueless about. But I know, she will always love me unconditionally.
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