Sunday 13 May 2012

So it's mother's day! So what?

When I was born, she thought I was ugly! So I got even with her by never letting her sleep! Then I sorted her out by giving up food for about 10 years. If I didn't get chocolates or ice cream, I would yell1 By the time I was two, I's learnt to use her make up and by the age of four, all her nail polishes had found their way to  my face!

If she wanted to go out, I fell ill. But if there was a fancy dress competition, I was fine and she had to make costumes for me, which magically tore before I reached the stage!

By 15, I had accused her of trying to ruin my life - she was torturing me into studying for my boards in stead of letting me go to a party! 

By 19, I was living in, sending my laundry from Delhi to Kanpur on a daily basis and still accusing her of giving me no freedom!

In my twenties, I moved to Bombay, began acting (having refused to be an IAS officer like all respectable girls from UP). I constantly demanded money and shopped. I lived in a little flat, and when she came to visit me, she cried! How did I ever live in such a tiny flat? I didn't tell her about the shopping, and the going out.

Years later, I realized I needed to tell her nothing! She'd always known everything! Bloody witch that she is! She knew my achievements and she knew my mistakes, just as she knew the real price of those shoes I pretended had been for rs 600 on sale! 

She smiled when I had my first crush! She knew it before me (bloody witch again). She told me to enjoy it! She knew when I grew up and fell in love and cried with me when my heart broke! She encouraged me to go out and seek it again! She forced me to spread my wings, sang to me, made me write, made me sing, get married and improve my hand writing! And all along I said she was not letting me do the things I wanted. I never  realized that she was gently nudging me to be the person I actually wanted to be!

Even now, I never tell her the real price of my shoes, I pretend I don't smoke, I try to hide my pain from her...but the pride in her eyes at what I've become makes me melt!

She's a writer, a poet, a story teller, a giggler and I'm a xerox copy of her! And I'm proud of it!

But the joy of this relationship is that it's not unique to me! It's the relationship every girl has with her mother and our daughters have with us! I bow humbly to this bond, and hope that someday, if I have a daughter, she will be a xerox of this amazing woman too! And that I will be, in some small way, the woman Pramila Agnihotri has tried to make me!

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