Mother's Day greetings to all women who have shaped us

Natasha Badhwar

THE only trouble with writing this column featuring my mother is that I don’t want everyone to think, “Oh what a wonderful woman Sudha is,” and as a result, collectively, accidentally nazar-lagao the unsuspecting woman after this is published. So, in the cause of greater good, I will try to temper my enthusiasm about the wonder that is my mother, Sudha.

A few years ago, my younger brother called to discuss Mother’s Day plans with me. We live in the same city but are hours apart in times of peak traffic. I was dismissive about the idea.

“Why should we bother with this new-fangled concept of Mother’s Day?” I said. “We don’t need one day to make her feel extra special. We can honour her on any day.”

On Mother’s Day, I found newly uploaded photos of my very happy mother on my Facebook and Instagram feed. She was having lunch in a posh restaurant with my cousins, who had collected in the city to take their mother out for a special treat and had also invited Sudha, their massi, since she was free. I will not say that I was not jealous when I saw my mother enjoying herself — not with her own thoughtful progeny, but with her nieces. It took some effort to regulate my emotions.

Later, Sudha shared her experience with us. She had loved it. I noted that this was not the first time I had misunderstood my mother’s needs. I am a repeat defaulter.

But I am not going to waste column space on Mother’s Day beating myself up for being a careless daughter. I am going to celebrate her and me.

In the interlude of the pandemic years, I have begun to look like my mother. Not my mother as she was when she was young, but my mother as an older woman. Of course, I am now as old as my mother as an older woman, but I had to stay at home to catch this new face in my mirror. It helps that I no longer blow dry my hair, I know exactly what is in the refrigerator and what may be running out and I probably worry more than before. I have had a different kind of competency thrust upon me.

More micro-level caring, more managing and more helplessness.

This might be the essence of motherhood. I don’t mean this in a bad way. It is a superpower to acknowledge vulnerability. If power corrupts, as we know it does, then the lack of power also offers us the gift of softness. Of compensating by tapping into our inner reserves.

“I often feel that everything I write is just me trying to find my way back to Sudha, my mother,” I said to a friend once. The first time she responded to a text message, spoke up in a WhatsApp group, commented on something I wrote in the public domain — I remember the spark of joy I feel when I receive her words. She is speaking up. She is listening to my authentic voice.

Like most mothers, Sudha has spent her life being too busy to indulge in mellow moments with her husband or children. Too many people have depended on her. She has been relentlessly over-efficient. When you are uncomplaining and forever available to others, you never catch a break for yourself.

The greatest lessons I am learning from my mother come from watching her as a grandmother. She brings the same high energy and attention to detail to her relationship with her grandchildren, who range from the ages of 19 to 3 years old. She also brings magic here.

I don’t know what else to call it because while I can see the results of it, I cannot fathom the process behind it. Sudha’s grandkids dote on her. My children feel safe in the world because Nani is there. Nani never has a meltdown. She never offers a tongue-lashing in response to their being small, inefficient humans. Even our pet animals, who are wary of other guests, flock around my mother when she visits.

A superlative feature of my mother is that she walks. Like regular people with discipline, she goes for walks twice a day. But she keeps walking the rest of the day also. Suddenly, in the middle of a family get-together, if Sudha is missing, you can be sure she has slipped out for a walk. She walks across the rooms in her own home to keep adding numbers to her walking app all day. If anything needs to be bought from a nearby shop or a faraway market, Sudha and her walking shoes are forever ready to make a dash for it.

Sudha’s walking empowers me. It gives hope to my painful heels and shaky knees. Like her, I will also recover from the excesses of youth as I grow older.

I texted my older brother who lives abroad to remind him that it is Mother’s Day in India this weekend. “Happy Mother’s Day to you. You are the best mom I know after my mom,” he texted me back. I totally believe him.

—The writer is a filmmaker & author.

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