Time: 11:16pm, Date: June 9, 2009, Place: Next to my Mom, watching TV.
Mother: A woman who raises a child, a woman who adopts a child, a woman who gives birth is what you see if you Google it but for me it is the woman who I am looking at right now, she is sleeping. I see wrinkles on her face, a tired body lying down, mouth open and tongue coming out; she is making funny noises while she sleeps. Her hair is salt and pepper untidy but tidy in my eyes, she is at peace as I sit next to her and she has everyone who she loves dearly by her side.
Amma as I call her with love and with various versions of the same name I have called her all my life, this suits her the best no in fact she makes all the names look good. So this is how it all started, today while I was sitting with Amma, she said while we were watching TV that how are some Mothers so proud of the fact that their kids make them proud by doing something great in their life, I looked at her face, she was not even looking at me and while she was busy looking at the proud mother on the Idiot box, I felt small, really small. I am 32 and can’t recall 32 proud moments that I have given to my mother. I have been busy earning money, making a career, falling in love, falling out of love, fighting my addiction to quit smoking, lose weight, fight amongst friends and colleagues, in a nutshell doing everything but with my own selfish motive. How can I turn out to be like that?
The earliest of the memories I can recall is the day my Father died, she was in the kitchen cooking food, my favorite meal Peas Pulao and there we get the phone call which changed 3 lives forever. My Father had suffered a severe stroke and was struggling for his life, I don’t remember her crying or creating a scene, next I remember is lighting my father’s pyre and that was it. At the age of 5, I was the MAN of the house and my mother had suddenly changed from a pretty young wife of 31 to the 31 year old woman who has to struggle all her life to raise 2 kids, who how would they turn out to be only god knew. I am sure that she must have had her doubts but then don’t we all get them time and again, all I know that she shrugged them off and started on the path where only she was there and were two of her kids who were following her like puppies not to be lost in this wild world.
I remember her getting up very early in the morning, cooking breakfast and prepare lunch at the same time for us, waking us up, getting us ready for the school, telling us how to be a good human being than a rich one, going to office, facing all the ridicule thrown at her, working her way all throughout the day, worrying about us, coming in the evening, cleaning all the mess that we use to create, asking us about how our day went and not discussing how her day was, doing household chores, cooking dinner for us and while she helped us do our homework and then watching us go to sleep. I actually never saw her sleep, I am sure she went to sleep with tears in her eyes, looking at us and praying to God that no matter what happens to her, we both should grow up to be fine human beings with all the things at our disposal which we never got a chance to lay our eyes on due to lack of possibilities.
This is not the life Asha Devi Ahluwalia had dreamt off, she must have had some really good dreams while she fell in love with my Father. She was young, very well educated and very pretty, she had the man of her dreams and she had the perfect life one could ask for. One could only envy her life, who could have thought that she would then start envying it herself one day.