Mere Paas Maa Hai.....

People often tell me, I am a grounded person.  They don’t know my “ground reality”. 

Every time someone praises me for my looks or whatever talent I have, I turn around Exorcist style, to check if it’s really me. You know just to make sure.  Stage two is giving them an incredulous look and an unsure smile.  Stage three I protest loudly. It’s much later I realize I have completely forgotten to say a graceful thank you!  But I am human after all, I succumb.  Sooner or later I start preening & posing, flutter my eyelashes and pat myself on the back - then I go visit my Mum.     Look how fat/skinny you have become.  Have you been dieting/ eating too much?  You know I prefer you in saris, did you really have to wear those jeans! You never call me, you are never home.  Why aren’t you trying to get published, how many actually read a blog!   I land on the ground with a loud thud and everything becomes normal again.

A mother-daughter relationship is usually an uneasy one and only your Mum is legitimately allowed to drive you up the wall.  And she does a fairly good job of it.  I have yet to ask my daughter about my success rate but she did write an entire post insisting her Mom is a vampire.

Of course I cannot generalize, there are many who never let go of the umbilical cord.  Unfortunately I am not one of them. 

Courtesy : Google Images

You may be a no-nonsense woman, with the world at your feet.  But for your Mum, you are still the little girl in pigtails who never got it right.   She will forever leave you in doubt about your parenting skills, your style quotient, your choice of career, friends, food....And she is never short of gyan.   So what if you are always in the wrong, trust me your Mum is always right!   She is the only person in the world who can berate you, have you hang your head in shame, drive you to tears.  And for a moment you forget if you ever grew up at all.    

My Mum was and still is a strikingly beautiful woman.  As a gawky teenager with an unruly mop of hair, I was painfully aware of it - thanks to the eager feedback from our many relatives.  And when I did make sincere attempts to rectify the situation – slathering myself with sundry vegetable and fruit pulps or using a fancy new hair mask, my Maa with her trademark stern expression would say “Shouldn’t you be studying instead”?  I would petulantly wash off the mask but made sure I didn’t study.   Haa! Don’t you expect me to be Miss Goody two shoes!   Sadly she hasn’t given up hope and I continue disappointing her.  If Ma ever felt proud of us (my brother and I) it was the town’s best kept secret.  

She had a soft corner for our German Shepherd Dingo – actually corner is an understatement, her whole heart was one gooey mass.  For him she would turn into a person we never knew - compose kiddy songs for him, pamper him silly and she had at least a dozen nicknames for him - each one to suit her mood.  Of course we were jealous and would often accuse her of loving him more than us.  He never answers back was her ready retort!   Yea, yea your Mum is always right.  At least someone got it right, so what if it was Dingo.

When I decided to leave my job on a mere whim, she wasn’t too happy with me and understandably so.  Every Mom wants her daughter to remain financially independent.  But then I took to writing and she was glad I was not just twiddling my thumbs.  I would make her read some of my write-ups, share my feeling of elation about the appreciation I was getting.  Yes, she was proud of me and this time it was no secret.   Of late she has been too busy and has been following my Blog rather sporadically, only when I ask her to.  The other day I asked her to read my post on Lungi.  After all I had dedicated it to my Baba!  I was breathlessly waiting for her verdict. When I got it I was again the little girl who never grew up.  Naaa your writing now has a sameness to it...read Bachi Karkaria...look how effortlessly she quotes from Shakespeare....why don’t you read Shakespeare!   Arrrghh....

I spent the rest of the week chewing my friends’ heads – Do you think I need to experiment with my style....Has my writing reached a dead end....please, please I need to know!   One of them jokingly suggested that I change my track to celebrity gossip.  That will be unique won’t it....I’ll now be bitching Shakespeare style.

Does that make you happy Maa?