loose diamonds, shifting flats and mother's day

Hello There!

I had been gone for a week. Did you miss me?

Well, there are no excuses except for the fact that sometimes working, studying, blogging, socializing gets too much for one to juggle. It really drains you out. Especially when you happen to be shifting nest on top of all the other activities of the week. But the dust has settled down, swept away rather, wardrobes cleaned, books categorized and shelved, and the birthday teddy bear washed, dried, fluff-ied and placed at his rightful place i.e. next to my pillow ( yes I still have my girlyness alive).

Now that everything is where it should be, I am back! This is the third time I have shifted in this year. I like the process. It’s like a mini adventure, always jogs your memory. You find small trinkets of past and could be future tucked between one of the books, some random sketches and designs which I mean to turn into real work, loose diamonds from a ring given by certain someone! (I am still to decide if I should dump them in the ocean..)

My roomates always get amazed to see that I have more books than clothes. And even more so to see that I have loose diamonds in old torn wallet where I keep other knick knacks and old black and white pictures. One of them is of my mom in a vintage knee length dress. She has her hair in ponytail and a front bang right till her eyebrows. She is wearing a small strappy kitten heel and standing in the back with other girls in the group. She is a nurse and this picture was taken during her last college year. She is voluptous in build and is leaning forward on a chair so you can see that she has a bulging stomach. That is apparently me in her womb! Her face has hint of shyness but does she look beautiful! Well perhaps, she is my mother so my judgement can be very biased.

I think it was during my early years when I started exploring English literature, I learnt of the phrase and it felt as if some age old unknown curse had fallen upon me. It went something like this. ‘All women become like their mother. That is their tragedy.’

At that age, I in no manner wanted to be like my mother. In fact, I hated her. I would wonder why couldn't she be the normal mother that my friends had. Why she wouldn't stay home, make us warm food, clean for us, always be there on my father's call. Why would she have to rush to stranger's house calls at random hours, why she was not there to celebrate our birthdays, our annual school functions when we were the ones who won almost half of the prizes (?)

Now that I am older, I understand her more. To think that at my age, she had given birth to two kids, was working full time, mothered us the best she knew, supported my father through his college amazes me. She was that strong and more, she was that giving, loving and more. I have seen her like that. And I have seen her in other lights too.

I had seen her love, her rage; at age of twelve when I was in a very confusing place called adolescence, sitting next to the sad and heaving figure of my mother, I have looked into her eyes, heard her words that echoed so much loneliness and sadness of being misunderstood that I think it scarred me till last half a dozen years.

I was a silent witness when society systematically with its age old hypocritical laws and labels killed one smile after another in her face; it dulled the fire in her eyes that was always ready to flare against unjust social taboos. Every time she was late from work, after saving yet another life of a newborn baby, or a mother, or a patient; she would be a loose woman! Every time she talked to another man, to prescribe his dose of medicine, to teach him how to care for his baby or his sick wife, she would be a whore!

I have also seen her love a man so much that she wiped her identity for him, she became him. I have seen her heart breaking and going down the dark and murky hole of depression. Seeing my mother as a person was very confusing and frustrating.

It is difficult to think that the woman who is the source of our life could be that vulnerable. It shakes your own confidence, make you vulnerable as well.  I was always the defiant one in the family, defiant and naïve to the limit of appearing stupid at times and all that confused me. I couldn’t understand that there were so many other lone warriors like her, who gave up sooner or later, tried from defending her honour again and again and again. And at the end, end up being what the society always labeled and wanted them to be. An outcast, a mere fallen mortal, who had gone beyond what the society deemed was right in the books.

But I have also seen her fight back.  I have seen her going down the dark and murky hole of depression and emerging out of it a victorious heart. I have seen and now understand her actions which were her answers to the so called puritan society and I feel proud that I am her daughter.

At the time when women were supposed to sit at home, clean kitchens and serve their husbands, my mother was out in the world, fighting in it for her own place under the sun, marching to her own drum beat. She rode an old bicycle every day for hours back and forth the remote health post, where she saved lives. She was a fighter; she was a savior. She was even the fashion trend setter :) ( the first one of wear kurtas instead of saris, first one to sassy in jeans and tops, first one to get that nasty noodle hair as my dad said, first one to wear red lipstick GASP!) She was a lover (GASP AGAIN!) rather than a submissive wife; she was the provider and not the helpless, at home she was adored and respected while most women were treated as if they were  some kind of household item, to be made well use of.

Despite all the name calling and blames she got (being a nurse was a big no no for a woman from respectable family then and running away from home to pursue education was even bigger social offence, my mother was guilty of both) she is still at her work. In fact, she has been promoted several times now and she has changed a whole village where she lives now with her fiery attitude. Because of her, most of the people have now enrolled their daughters in nursing school, while I was the one who in fear of becoming like my mother decided to take a compeletely different course of life.  

I cannot speak for men, they might have their own personal wars to win and heartbreaks to heal, as I can recall from my father's life (entirely different story and today is Mother's day). What I have learnt is that different course from your mother or not, there will always be heartbreaks, struggle for identity, you will always have to fight for your rights and what you deserve anywhere you go.

She will always be my inspiration. My friends tell me how envious they are that I have a mother who is more a friend and intellectual sound board rather than an old heckling hen. And what more, she still lives her life passionately. If that saying is true, than I look forward to becoming more like who she is.

- The Warrior Princess