My Mother, My Teacher

During summer holidays, I’d go play football with the boys and come back a muddy goblin with dirt rings around my neck. But one day, somewhere between passes and shoving each other on the field, I told a fellow footballer I had a crush on him. He knocked me down and told me to stay away from him. Everyone laughed. I ran home crying.

When I got there, Mom was home, having her evening cup of chai, as always. I hugged her tightly around the waist and buried my face in her stomach. She asked me what happened, and I managed to get a few words out between sobs. Then she said, “You go tell that boy that if he doesn’t want to be looked at, he should wear a burkha.”

I stopped crying and looked up at her in astonishment. Political incorrectness aside, I couldn’t comprehend how she had managed to pull that analogy out so quickly. For her to listen to my trifling problems and have that sharp, witty comeback ready at once was astounding to my pre-teen brain.

That was my mother: full of witty comebacks, never batting an eyelid before throwing one around.

In that moment she taught me never to be ashamed of my feelings. To feel everything as intensely as I do and wear them like an unapologetically uncoordinated outfit—slightly too loud, a little too proud, and often enough to make the people around me uncomfortable.

A teacher all her life, her best lessons weren’t found in classrooms but in the way she lived her life.

By being a single mother, she normalised the “do it yourself” attitude and not being dependent on anyone. 

By working two jobs way into her fifties, she taught me there was no substitute for hard work.

By singing and dancing around her daily chores, she showed me that life’s beauty truly did belong to the mundane.

Growing up, I could hardly relate to the stories of my peers who would complain of their parents being unreasonable with them. Mom was almost always logical, even pragmatic, in her approach. 

In yet another anecdote of my dealings with the opposite sex while growing up, Mom received a call from the vice principal’s office because a few of us were caught sneaking out at recess to shop (or window shop for trinkets) on Hill Road. 

I watched in horror as some of the other girls’ parents were summoned to school and told that we were “talking to boys” (a lie I never understood the need for) and how that was the ultimate betrayal for nice convent school girls. By the time I climbed the steps back home, I had already said a few prayers for myself.

When I entered, there was Mom, her precious afternoon nap interrupted. She recounted the exchange with the vice principal in the most cavalier manner.

“Your vice principal called and said you were caught talking to boys at recess.” 

Before I could justify myself, Mom told me her reply had been: “Yeah, alright. So?”

And, once again, I was gobsmacked. Where was the belting? The kneeling down and begging for forgiveness? The slaps across the face my peers had assured me were inevitable?

But Mom was different.

She explained how she doesn’t want me running around outside school during recess and that it wasn’t safe and I understood. Then she got up and made herself another cup of chai.

I always knew I had a cool mom. I saw it in her thick, long hair—the kind that made so many fall a little in love with her while she was growing up. I saw it in the photograph of her posing with a lit cigarette, laughing with a friend. She was never afraid of doing things out of the ordinary like getting her hair cut at the barber shop down the road instead of a fancy salon, or shaving her head as though it meant nothing at all.

I saw that admiration follow her everywhere. Walking down the road with her was like accompanying a local celebrity; children and adults alike would stop to greet her. After all, she was also the principal of the night school and, somewhere along the way, had taught a few grown-ups how to live a little differently.

Just as she taught me to make the best of what life offers—in the literal sense—she also raised my elder sister and me to believe in ourselves and trust our instincts. And one day, quite cinematically, she gave me away at the altar.

Ma, Amma, Mom, Mommy—I have fluctuated between all these names for her, but she has always understood exactly what I mean each time I call her.

Maybe that is why it feels only natural now that she expects me to understand what she means, even when the words do not fully come out. Her rare condition has made it impossible for her to express herself in her most loved way. Though, somehow, she still never struggles to get her facetious messages across.

If there ever was an embodiment of smiling through pain, it would be my mother.