MA...

Once upon a time she was a bubbly pampered sister of three elder brothers, who loved handiwork, going to movies, dressing up, painting, playing pranks and her cats. And then she got married to become a wife at 18. Then one day she had ME and became a mother at 20. A few years later, she eventually had my two younger sisters and added to the list of things she previously was. She became a cook, a dresser, a wiper of our dirty faces, a cleaner of our soiled diapers, a nurse when we were ill, a retriever of thrown socks and uniforms, a finder of our lost shoes, a doer of our homework we couldn’t complete, an insomniac. She was a referee in our toy-wars, a slayer of dragons in our nightmares, the face of angels in all those fairy-tale bed-time stories that she’d read out to us every night before tucking us in bed to sleep. She was the expert innovative chef who had to come up with 1001 tiffin-recipes which could not be repeated very often, a duty-bound guard who would walk us to school and bring us back home, holding the umbrellas to protect us from the sun or the rains and sometimes even carry one of my sisters who would get tired walking. She was a soother of nervous school jitters, a coach to prepare us for our tests and exams, a strict (hate-able) character when we scored poor marks, an adorable rewarder when we passed with flying colors and a sporty leader of girl-scouts.

With each passing day, her talents grew: she became a baker of delicious cakes and cookies, a hygienic competitor of the dirty roadside chaat-wala, an ice-cream vendor who distributed popsicles and ‘milkmaid-kulfis’ not only to us but to all our neighborhood playmates absolutely free-of-cost. She learnt to sew prize-winning costumes for our fancy-dress competitions, compose the best school essays which would score us maximum marks in the whole class, come up with the best ideas for our science exhibition projects and embroider the most beautiful motifs for our hand-work assignments. She would be my transporter, guide and motivator for all those numerous art-competitions that I participated in as a child.

Her body, once which was her own to do with it as she pleased, now belonged to us—she ate for ‘us’ when she was carrying us in her womb, her breasts were the only source of food or life we recognized as infants, her shoulders were used by us to cry upon, her arms to be hugged by whenever we needed her warmth and security, and her lap for us to sit and cuddle upon. Her lips became the kissers and soothers for all our unstoppable boo-hoos and tears, her hips were the carrier of our small, squirmy bundles and her hands our cradle.
She could braid or tie-up our hair in the time most people could only manage to wash their faces. She could bathe, dress, feed and get all the three of us ready for school in half-an-hour flat. And she could smile for us even when she didn’t actually feel like. Her feet were used to walk the house with us in her arms at any hour of the night, if either one of us had a difficult time sleeping due to illness or nightmares. And as we were growing up, she even grew eyes in the back of her head and her hearing became supersonic--lest we should fall into wrong things or wrong people at a wrong age.

Her parents had named her ‘Mina’. Then as she became a mother she had as many aliases as a conman. She became—at various times—Mm, Ma, Ma-ma, Mom, Mommy, Mummy, Mum, Mina-ma (I used to call her that, as if to distinguish her as the special one of the various other moms in the neighborhood, she recalls) and for a brief period of her mental vexation, ‘Mins’ (when we called her that teasingly).

Her free time which might have once been occupied to do things of her interest, were now used to tidy the disorderly jumble of our toys, books, empty chips packets, used plates, empty cans of cold-drinks, a carpet of clutter and chaos and a dwelling of disarray.

Her mind which might have once flourished with egocentric thoughts, were sometimes filled with irrational ideations: “What if they fall out of the bed while I’m in the kitchen?” “What if they choke on their food?” “How safe would they be to get back home after dark from their friends’ birthday party?” “What if they choose the wrong guys as their boyfriends or to get married to?” “Did I say anything to hurt my darlings?” “Am I a good mother?” “How will I know if I’m falling short of anything in bringing them up?” etc… These were some of her insecurities I would overhear her sharing with Dad, once in a while when he was home (my dad had to travel a lot due to the nature of his job and he was hardly home till we grew up).

But for us three sisters, my Ma has been and always will be our ideal icon… even more important and loveable than God himself, coz she’d done something nobody else had ever done for us… accomplished a feat so death-defying and magical that many wouldn’t even attempt doing. She’s the one and only form, face, smell and name of pure and unselfish love I’d ever known. She’s my Ma….