Amma's Anniversary

Tomorrow is that dreaded day when exactly one year ago, we woke up to a new ugly reality. A day when literally in a few minutes, a seismic shift altered our lives forever.

It was today, 25th May, that Amma shared her last living moments with all of us. These last few days, my chitti's (mother’s younger sister) my periamma (mom’s older sister), Appa and I – all of us who beheld Amma those last few days and hours have spent reliving her last few moments: This day last year. What were we doing? ‘This moment, were we not returning from the temple trip?’ ‘She said that, didn’t she?’ ‘We ate that yummy curd rice you had packed’ ‘Why did she agree to return when you asked her to?’ The questions without answers, the moments etched in stone, the sorrow, the regret, - all of it lived dozens of times through the year in over a dozen hearts and minds, back to haunt us again today, and maybe again this day next year, and the year after…

Death is so matter of fact – everything born must die – nobody prepares you for how it shapes you when a loved one dies. This is one area we have no training in. There are classes on how to give birth, how to feed your baby, how to parent, how to deal with your child, how to manage your spouse, how to this, how to that. But nobody trains you on how to deal with life after the death of a loved one. What should you do when you see your rock, your father, break down and cry like a baby? How do you decide who gets your mother’s most prized possessions? The little décor items she picked out with so much love – invaluable to her, but worthless to someone else? Do you throw or keep her chappals she left behind in your house? Her store of sarees – who do you give them to? How do you handle your own helplessness, when you see your surviving parent wrapped in loneliness? Most of all, nobody prepares you for the seismic shift in your own mind, in your priorities, in how you suddenly view your own life and your choices. Nobody tells you that your journey from being a child to becoming the adult is now finally complete, and that, now, in many ways, your generation has reached the front of the queue.

When blood supply to a part of our body gets blocked, a web of other smaller blood vessels emerges to take its place. That web of love is what we are slowly learning to build: new connections forged over old relationships, old connections reimagined, strengthened, to fill the giant void left by that queen-sized one.: Father to daughter, brother to sister, Aunt to niece, brother in law – sister in law. Sister to sister. Daughter-in law – father –in law, granddaughter to grandfather. All connections to help us heal, to cope, to carry on, to somehow move on.

This last year has also been a series of firsts: the first time your dad cooked you a meal for many days in a row, the first time you cooked him one many days in a row. The first time your dad fought with the maid, the first time you helped your dad manage their home. The first birthday you didn’t get a call from her first thing in the morning, the first new year you brought in without wishing her at midnight. The first year your dad celebrated his wedding anniversary alone, the first year your aunt didn’t get a saree on her special day. The first time ma didn’t make gajar halwa on your brother’s birthday, the first Diwali she didn’t make your favorite ‘omapudi’ The first time you didn’t instantly know when something had happened in the extended family, the first time you attended a family function on her behalf. That f first time you picked up the phone to call her, but then cut the call, that first time you cooked her signature dish without calling her first. And with each first, you learning, accepting, that this is not a just another horrible dream you will eventually wake up from.

They say Time heals, and heal it has, even if it should be doing a better job. How much longer for the ache to vanish, Time? It’s been a year, a year already. And somehow her looming absence, rankles still.

Mothers and Daughters and Legacy

Today morning, as we were returning after seeing our daughter off at the airport , to a 3 week residential summer camp, we saw her plane soaring up into the sky. ‘There she flies, your birdie’, my husband remarked. And then in a softer tone, he added ‘she has big wings, your birdie. Soon she will fly away’. And he gave voice to what I have privately known about Trayi : she has big wings. She needs them too, to give flight to her soaring ambition and to her sky high dreams. 
I should have probably feel a twinge of sadness when Ajit made that observation, but all I felt was pride. And gratitude.
Pride because I have seen Trayi in the days leading up to today. She has started practicing already, taking charge of her life. She took charge of her packing : making a detailed list of things she needed to carry, and then meticulously packed her things. She took care of everything : her music play list, her drum practice pads, her kindle, her formal clothes for the convocation , her passport sized photos - every little thing. She seemed to be saying : Don’t worry about me mommy, I am ready to fly.
And I felt gratitude. Gratitude because I have been able to pass on to my daughter, the large wings that my mother made for me. She didn’t inherit wings, my mom. When she grew up, sheltered and cocooned, wings were not something the girls got. They were protected by chaperones from the world outside and from their own dreams by the elders inside.
She didn’t remember her childhood fondly, Amma. She spoke of quashed desires and unfulfilled dreams. And maybe that is why, almost with a vengeance, she imbued in me all her dreams and so many of her desires. And then just for fun, she gave me some more. And alongwith those dreams, she also knitted for me big large wings to fly , so I reach for them. She freed me in ways that was not only ahead of her generation, but also alien in her mileau.
Had my mom played it safe, by the rules she had been taught to follow : maybe today, my daughter wouldn’t have flown with her big large wings.
Happy Mother’s Day Amma.
Happy Anniversay Venkataraman Mani and Amma !

Meeting and Parting : Part 2

They stood as strangers, side by side. 
Eschewing talk, letting silence glide. 
Lips pursed. Shifty eyed. 
Memories stained, the rifts really wide. 
And hurting hearts they couldn't hide. 

Meeting and Parting : Part 1

The eyes, they made love. The lips, they lied. 

Their qualms, they feared; their chasms wide. 

Unleashed storms, passions, they sought to hide. 

But the eyes wouldn't obey their bide. 

Moving from Pune to Mumbai

Today we complete a week in our new city, in our new home. The week before last, as our boxes got packed with our things, and we emptied out a home we had lived in for 6 years, the feeling was wistful, bittersweet. We were packing our belongings, but also our memories of a wonderful time in our lives. We did our many #lasts ; last walk in the verdant Pune university, last misalpav at Bedekars, last chocolate lava cake at JWMarriott, last series of lunches and dinners at friends' homes, friends we will hopefully carry in our hearts forever, but can no longer meet on a whim. Pune is just two hours away from Maximum City Mumbai, and yet, it might be in a different country - so different are the two places. Pune was languid, verdant, hilly, but also proud, cultured and -like it or not - closed to outsiders. Like the walled city Shaniwar wada at its centre - Pune's walls between its insiders and outsiders were high and unbreachable. The insiders all knew each other, or were one connection away from knowing each other. The outsiders were tolerated at best, often just ignored. 

Mumbai - fast, pacy, buzy, and unapologetically commercial, has no time for pride. It is loud in many ways, kitchy in so many others, lacking you may say, the cultural purity of Pune. But Mumbai doesnt quite care. It is too buzy living, wholly and fully, to even notice what anybody thinks about it. Like the ocean it sits beside, it is an ocean of dreams. It is where Indians run towards, if they want to make it in the world, or sometimes to just escape their own. It pulls you into its embrace instantly, but dont expect to be mollycoddled. You immediately join the many millions of anonymous, irrelevant folks jostling for their bit of sunlight in this mighty ocean.

Just as the week before last, was about wrapping up our memories, last and this week have been about unpacking them, and beginning to create our series of #firsts. Our first walk down to Foodhall for an intimate mother daughter meal, our first dinner at home with friends, that first morning walk in the quiet bylanes of our neighbourhood, first stop for pani puri at the world famous in Santacruz Ram & Shyam- chaatwala, first visit to the local Santacruz market, slowly but surely understanding the contours of our neighbourhood, our new home. 
Home is a feeling I have realised. Sitting in that empty house, waiting to hand over the keys back to the land lord, the home that had hugged me when I cried like a baby after my dream for my start-up ended, and the home that sent my mother away on her last journey felt like an estranged friend. I knew its spaces, its contours intimately, but it was no longer mine. 
But when I sat in the empty house in Mumbai, a house that was a complete stranger to me, waiting to welcome my beloved belongings, I felt I was home already. Feeling embraced, like the millions of dream chasers in this Maximum City.

Amma Birthday 2019

Growing up in a large joint family, in a conservative rural set up, birthdays weren’t really a thing in Amma’s household. A new dress probably. A trip to the temple. But with so many children, birthdays weren’t really celebrated. Shouldn’t a birthday make somebody feel really really special? For both my brother and I - Ma pulled out all the stops. For each of my brother’s birthdays, which falls in January, she built a tradition of making cabbage vadas and gajar ka halwa. She kept up with that tradition till her last year and Anandam my Manni (Bhabhi) picked up the baton this year. Mine , she pampered me even more. She ensured I had a birthday party till I was 25! She taught me to love birthdays and indulged my desire to celebrate it, well past the age most people do. I left home at age 21, but irrespective of which city I was in - Delhi once, Mumbai another couple of times - she ensured my birthday got celebrated - with my father or even my brother - taking my friends out for atleast a dinner. I got married before my 26th birthday, and my husband has carried that tradition forward for me. A birthday party is something I relish still - and I pull out all the stops for Trayi each year, and I celebrate my own with much enthusiasm. 
After she got married, Appa ensured Amma’s birthday was special too. She always celebrated it. Wearing a new saree and going out for a special birthday meal with close friends or family. Maybe watch a movie..Last year, luckily, we all were with her on her birthday. She took the whole family out to one of her favorite restaurants in Koramangala -Grameen. Today, on her 72nd birthday, had she been around, she would have wanted us all to go to Ramana’s maybe - another of her handful of favourites. She didn’t quite relish Chinese or Mexican food. Italian, she grew to like, but a true celebration for her had to be with North Indian food or South Indian food she didn’t make at home..She loved a good celebration, my Amma. And celebrate it we will - with some of her favourites. Happy Birthday Ma! With Venkataraman Mani Ravi Mani

The Lonely Onlies

These are the lonely onlies. One half of a perfectly matched pair of earrings. Their partner is no longer there with them. Lost somewhere, somehow. By themselves they appear intact, whole. But without their mate, they are wholly incomplete. Aren’t we - many of us atleast - like these earrings ? We need a partner - a soulmate to make us feel whole. A soulmate - our twin soul - whose presence completes us and whose absence makes us feel like we have lost a part of ourselves. A romantic partner, a best friend maybe, or a sibling. That perfect pairing took years in the making. A quirk got added here, a habit formed there, till we ended up as perfectly matched. Our identity tied to being one half of a pair. Losing our other half then alters us too, permanently. We are then perennially destined to be the lonely onlies- the one half that got left behind. Holding on to memories of another time..and wishing for a past that can never return.