My favorite story about Amma was told to me by her siblings. Amma was a teenager, in school, in her village in Kerala. It was fashionable at the time to tie two braids. Thatha, Amma’s dad disapproved of fashion. But Amma, my rebellious mom, decided otherwise. She got her Akka, my aunt, to tie two braids, and then, just to make her point, went for a ‘walk’ across Thatha’s office, making sure he noticed her.
Let me put this in perspective. Thatha, was amongst the most respected in the village, and the family, amongst the most influential in Kerala. In his family, in his home and in his village, his word was the law. Distant and inaccessible, the closest, I remember anybody getting to him was a couple of feet. I don’t remember him touching anybody- no hugs, no handshakes, nothing. He was not somebody you trifled with or threw a tantrum in front of. Everybody, including his wife, was a little scared of him. He was a benevolent dictator, alright.
I can visualize Amma – a slender, 13-14-year-old, walking past Thatha’s home office, relishing her little act of rebellion, and telling Thatha with no words at all – that she would do as she pleased. Amma- the rebel.
Thatha, inspire of being from one of Kerala’s richest families, was also notoriously frugal. A story that had me in splits was about Amma and her siblings trading tamarind seeds for tiny pencil ends. You had to show your pencil was finished before you got another one, and if you happened to lose your tiny pencil end, you bribed you classmates with tamarind seeds, for theirs, so you could get your next new pencil!
Amma fought whenever she could, in small ways, against the rigid strictures of her childhood. ‘She was more a brother to us’ my cousin who stayed with Thatha and studied alongside Amma, says. She was always standing up to Thatha, holding him to his word and ensuring, all the kids got what they were promised. Amma, the fighter.! ‘She was quite a handful, apparently. I chuckle quietly, thinking of Amma as the rebel, the fighter. Her spirit had mellowed somewhat, especially over the last few years, but in that young rebellious girl, I recognize a familiar person. Me.
My childhood was perfect in so many ways, I see now, because Amma was determined to give me everything, every experience she found her childhood wanting in. She nurtured me with not just her love, but all her unfulfilled dreams. A birthday party every single year till I was 25!! - Did she have a single one? Modern fashionable clothes, when all she was allowed was a half saree, or in college, saree. Short hair, when she could never cut hers. She ensured I did no housework at all, coz she had cradled babies when she should have been studying. I went on every single school/college excursion, because she had yearned to, but hadn’t been allowed. Amma loved to sing, but hadn’t been trained in classical music. She put me in classical music class almost as soon as I started to read and write...Amma was always more ambitious for my career than maybe I was myself. She stopped talking to me when I pushed back my joining date at my job after I had Trayi, and she relocated to Gurgaon for 3 months when I joined back, so I could work when she cared for my 10 month old baby. When I quit my cushy corporate job in Thailand to pursue my entrepreneurial ambitions, she didn’t support it one bit. ‘Who quits a job with a car and driver unnecessarily?’ She would ask.
But I was not just the seed of Amma’s unfulfilled desires and her dreams, I was also, I realise, the seed of her rebellion. If she rebelled against her families’ constrained boundaries, I rebelled against her unspoken boundaries for me. Once I was courageous enough to stand up to her, I stopped learning classical music. I hated it with the same vengeance that she wanted me to love it. Wear Jeans, it’s OK, she said, but wear a bindi too. Who wears a bindi with jeans ? I rebelled. Stay Vegetarian was an unspoken dictat. Doesn’t most of the world eat meat ? I rebelled. That Alcohol was an untouchable vice was an unstated fact. All my girlfriends drink!!. I rebelled. Working my way up the corporate ladder was what she wanted of me. Isnt entrepreneurship more thrilling ? I rebelled. She gave me wings, my ma, and also her headstrong will. And the place I put it most to use was against her.
How different I am from Amma, I always used to think. She became more traditional with age and I thought I was cool and a-traditional. The truth is, I am more like her than she or I realized. She, at the age I am now, was as much a bundle of contradictions as I am now. Like her, and maybe because of her, I have always tried entrepreneurship. She sold sarees, and some other Knicks and knacks, I sold décor objects and then services. She was deeply ritualistic about religious and cultural traditions, and while I am not deeply into religion and culture as yet, I realize I am deeply ritualistic about different things, doing some things with the same clockwork intensity that she maintained for religious traditions. Amma was deeply house proud, keeping an impeccable home, I am deeply house proud too. Human connection and relationships defined her, as they do me, and I have inherited from her, the ability to care for people less fortunate than me. I think I am super liberal, but it is from her that I imbibed the art of befriending people across artificial barriers of caste, region, religion or country. She was deeply opinionated, and so am I. I thought I was far more even tempered, but my daughter shattered my illusion the other day, when after I deleted her from a WhatsApp chat group, serenely pronouncing she was used to me ‘lashing out’. Funny she used those words, as that is how I remember Amma as well.
It had been about 7 weeks after Amma’s death and I was at this shop to buy a few things for a cousin. It was a shop dealing with traditional sarees, and one my mother used to frequent during her trips to Pune, to buy and sell in Bangalore for a small profit. I rarely accompanied her on those trips, though I had called the shopkeeper to request them to cancel my mom’s last purchase of sarees, an order she placed 3 days before she died.
The shopkeeper didn’t know me, and I wasn’t in the mood to check with him if he remembered my mom. I was busy looking through their stuff, when he couldn’t resist himself anymore. He asked my mother in law “Is this woman the daughter of that lady who died a few weeks ago?” I was shocked. 'How did you know?' I asked. I was in jeans and a top, my Amma, always in a saree.
‘You resemble her a lot’ he said simply. ‘The way you walk’ said his brother.
‘She hasn’t gone away. You will find her around you’ they all said when she died. ‘What do you mean’ I asked. ‘You will see her in unexpected places, looking over you at unexpected times. In your children sometimes’
What they never said, was that the place I would see her most frequently was inside me. That the person who would remind me most of her, was me.
Let me put this in perspective. Thatha, was amongst the most respected in the village, and the family, amongst the most influential in Kerala. In his family, in his home and in his village, his word was the law. Distant and inaccessible, the closest, I remember anybody getting to him was a couple of feet. I don’t remember him touching anybody- no hugs, no handshakes, nothing. He was not somebody you trifled with or threw a tantrum in front of. Everybody, including his wife, was a little scared of him. He was a benevolent dictator, alright.
I can visualize Amma – a slender, 13-14-year-old, walking past Thatha’s home office, relishing her little act of rebellion, and telling Thatha with no words at all – that she would do as she pleased. Amma- the rebel.
Thatha, inspire of being from one of Kerala’s richest families, was also notoriously frugal. A story that had me in splits was about Amma and her siblings trading tamarind seeds for tiny pencil ends. You had to show your pencil was finished before you got another one, and if you happened to lose your tiny pencil end, you bribed you classmates with tamarind seeds, for theirs, so you could get your next new pencil!
Amma fought whenever she could, in small ways, against the rigid strictures of her childhood. ‘She was more a brother to us’ my cousin who stayed with Thatha and studied alongside Amma, says. She was always standing up to Thatha, holding him to his word and ensuring, all the kids got what they were promised. Amma, the fighter.! ‘She was quite a handful, apparently. I chuckle quietly, thinking of Amma as the rebel, the fighter. Her spirit had mellowed somewhat, especially over the last few years, but in that young rebellious girl, I recognize a familiar person. Me.
My childhood was perfect in so many ways, I see now, because Amma was determined to give me everything, every experience she found her childhood wanting in. She nurtured me with not just her love, but all her unfulfilled dreams. A birthday party every single year till I was 25!! - Did she have a single one? Modern fashionable clothes, when all she was allowed was a half saree, or in college, saree. Short hair, when she could never cut hers. She ensured I did no housework at all, coz she had cradled babies when she should have been studying. I went on every single school/college excursion, because she had yearned to, but hadn’t been allowed. Amma loved to sing, but hadn’t been trained in classical music. She put me in classical music class almost as soon as I started to read and write...Amma was always more ambitious for my career than maybe I was myself. She stopped talking to me when I pushed back my joining date at my job after I had Trayi, and she relocated to Gurgaon for 3 months when I joined back, so I could work when she cared for my 10 month old baby. When I quit my cushy corporate job in Thailand to pursue my entrepreneurial ambitions, she didn’t support it one bit. ‘Who quits a job with a car and driver unnecessarily?’ She would ask.
But I was not just the seed of Amma’s unfulfilled desires and her dreams, I was also, I realise, the seed of her rebellion. If she rebelled against her families’ constrained boundaries, I rebelled against her unspoken boundaries for me. Once I was courageous enough to stand up to her, I stopped learning classical music. I hated it with the same vengeance that she wanted me to love it. Wear Jeans, it’s OK, she said, but wear a bindi too. Who wears a bindi with jeans ? I rebelled. Stay Vegetarian was an unspoken dictat. Doesn’t most of the world eat meat ? I rebelled. That Alcohol was an untouchable vice was an unstated fact. All my girlfriends drink!!. I rebelled. Working my way up the corporate ladder was what she wanted of me. Isnt entrepreneurship more thrilling ? I rebelled. She gave me wings, my ma, and also her headstrong will. And the place I put it most to use was against her.
How different I am from Amma, I always used to think. She became more traditional with age and I thought I was cool and a-traditional. The truth is, I am more like her than she or I realized. She, at the age I am now, was as much a bundle of contradictions as I am now. Like her, and maybe because of her, I have always tried entrepreneurship. She sold sarees, and some other Knicks and knacks, I sold décor objects and then services. She was deeply ritualistic about religious and cultural traditions, and while I am not deeply into religion and culture as yet, I realize I am deeply ritualistic about different things, doing some things with the same clockwork intensity that she maintained for religious traditions. Amma was deeply house proud, keeping an impeccable home, I am deeply house proud too. Human connection and relationships defined her, as they do me, and I have inherited from her, the ability to care for people less fortunate than me. I think I am super liberal, but it is from her that I imbibed the art of befriending people across artificial barriers of caste, region, religion or country. She was deeply opinionated, and so am I. I thought I was far more even tempered, but my daughter shattered my illusion the other day, when after I deleted her from a WhatsApp chat group, serenely pronouncing she was used to me ‘lashing out’. Funny she used those words, as that is how I remember Amma as well.
It had been about 7 weeks after Amma’s death and I was at this shop to buy a few things for a cousin. It was a shop dealing with traditional sarees, and one my mother used to frequent during her trips to Pune, to buy and sell in Bangalore for a small profit. I rarely accompanied her on those trips, though I had called the shopkeeper to request them to cancel my mom’s last purchase of sarees, an order she placed 3 days before she died.
The shopkeeper didn’t know me, and I wasn’t in the mood to check with him if he remembered my mom. I was busy looking through their stuff, when he couldn’t resist himself anymore. He asked my mother in law “Is this woman the daughter of that lady who died a few weeks ago?” I was shocked. 'How did you know?' I asked. I was in jeans and a top, my Amma, always in a saree.
‘You resemble her a lot’ he said simply. ‘The way you walk’ said his brother.
‘She hasn’t gone away. You will find her around you’ they all said when she died. ‘What do you mean’ I asked. ‘You will see her in unexpected places, looking over you at unexpected times. In your children sometimes’
What they never said, was that the place I would see her most frequently was inside me. That the person who would remind me most of her, was me.
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