Mother, I love You

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Mothers Day..
I too wished my mother on Facebook posting our photos to indulge her recently acquired social networking skills.

Everyone out there picks out this day to share their best moments with their mothers while every second generation mothers proudly displays photographic evidence of their roles as both daughters and mothers.
These photographs speaks a thousand words, capturing a few candid moments while most of them are aesthically posed.All of them traps just a part of the real deal..only the sweet ones .

One declaration that you see commonly in the write ups which accompanies these photographs is “Mom I want to be like you”
Really…..?
I would say I wish to be an updated and upgraded version of my mother after fixing the bugs.
Mothers are imperfect beings like anybody else.

The universe has bestowed us with a halo for reasons everyone know.

We are irreplaceable. Even if we are not picture perfect , you are bonded to us for ever.

There are many traits in my mother which I have inherited and proudly declare so, whereas many more which I hate but still they form a part of my genetic makeup.
The reminder that “you are acting like your mother” , however demeaning it may sound , never fails to put me in reboot and update mode.

But yes, we love them, even though nothing can compare the quantum of love we receive in return.

I am still only twenty years into motherhood and I know that I have spoken and acted in anger which probably have hurt my boys.
I may have favoured one or the other on multiple occasions .

My elder one is sweet and diplomatic and has locked away all those hurt somewhere within his heart and does not hold it against me. He is the perfect son and no girl who dates him or becomes his life partner would say that his mother spoiled him. He is twenty and sometimes I am filled with awe and I wonder…did I really create him…? I can claim only the biological bits along with just 25 percent of the rest of what he has become. He is a self made man..

With him, even if they are bottled and corked, I do know of the existence of those slights and pain caused by me, from the meanings which I glean out from the bits and pieces which gets knowingly or unknowingly dropped under the table during our conversations .

My younger one, on the other hand, has my crime sheet pasted on the inner side of his wardrobe door.
It is not long yet , just five or six statements which I have spoken in anger like ,” Volunteer to help only if you really wish to help and not because I ask you to. ” He is sensitive and never hesitates to call a spade a spade. For him, I am infallible, the queen of the house and his angel and hence cannot be less than perfect. Hence every one of my fails and falls will be reminded so that I don’t make them again.

I too have memories like those which reveals a side of my mother which I do not like.
We do sometimes make the same mistakes that our mother made once and which we swore against and then end up blaming her.
We might say ‘I hate you” on her face or “I hate her” in our minds.

She might embarass us before our friends .
She might irritate us with her requests, complaints and demands.
From being dependent on her , we learn to be independent and then we walk away to our own world where she becomes a responsibility.

We have our excuses ready for not making that phone call or for not visiting her .
Even if we don’t , she would have those ready for us.

She had us accommodated in her womb for nine months ,expanding its muscles as per our growing dimensions.

She would never hate us or dislike us ,whatever we do or say.
All that she yells when we or her spouse, our father, drives her crazy, is something she never means and would never remember even.

She is our mother and for her, the umblical cord is never severed.

We won’t realize how priceless that tug is, till we won’t have it anymore.

That is why we dedicate a day for her, to halt, search for a photograph… a memory which celebrates her, and post it on our wall for everyone to see .

We are her extensions.

Mother ,even though you know it, I just wanted to say ” I love you”

Another one of the Locked Down Days

It is 8 pm and I am in my balcony watching the world outside

This is the time when people choose to come out of their day long forced staying indoors.
Probably they have evidence that corona hits the bed early .

The lone cement bench under the almond tree has two occupants.
A father and daughter have brought their dog out and he has marked his territory on the legs of the street lamp.
An old lady and her grand daughter are feeding a pack of strays occassionally stooping down to pet them.
There is constant movement of cars and two wheelers up and down the road.
An ambulance passed by, probably with newly detected cases.
A zomato delivery guy at the gate of the building across the street, trying to reach the person who placed the order.
It is just another normal evening , or rather ,an evening which everyone accepted as the new normal, with everyday characters you see in a quiet neighborhood like mine, the only difference being, the mask covering their faces.

Maybe tomorrow will be different because my neighborhood has now been cordoned off as a containment zone .
The officials in khaki were on the road announcing the same , while people declared their solidarity by clapping their hands, clanging vessels and shouting Bharat Mata Ki Jai.

Where does hope springs from?
I believe it arises from the stories of the brave who held on and didn’t give up…who tackled adversities and lived to tell the stories of how they fought and won…
We are where we never expected to be.
We will be there to tell the story of how we saw through this trial.
It will be a tale of how we lost much, but still survived.

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Kamothe Police announcing the area as Containment Zone