Mom - my friend, my child

Fiercely protective. Strict. Brutally honest.

If you asked me a decade ago, to describe mom, I would have told these words without thinking and then requested you not to tell her. Today, she would laugh asking us, “so what if I was so strict” over our smirks.

There was never a backtracking or confusion in mom’s world, her thoughts, actions were clear and aligned and she held on to their views. Her name Satya Rani, means the “queen of truth”. She embodies it.

Coming from a generation of women, who had to make life changing decisions, feed their family at the precise age I was dreaming about purchasing a farewell saree. My great- grandmother was a midwife, widowed at a young age and through sheer grit, built a life not only for her children but for her sister’s kids as well.

My grandmother (whom I never had a chance to meet) brought up her only daughter as a single mother in a society that was no less cruel to her than it was to her mother while studying her M.A in Economics and working part-time. My mother, in her late 20's will lost grandma to cardiac arrest, fall in love with my dad two years later. Mom used to recount when she was pregnant with me, she almost had a miscarriage and that she was praying tearfully that she wants this child at any cost. Here I am.

The unlikely friendship and a beautiful bond

It was now mom's destiny to always be the strong woman. Would life ever give them a break sometimes, I wonder?

If you ask me, it freaking doesn't. It simply gets passed on like a baton.

At those testing times our family went through, from the age I was barely 10, I would become mom’s confidence and a friend listening to her feelings. Today, there are healthy conversations about mental health but in the early 2000’s it was an extremely polarised environment, at least in my world.

We learnt to lean on who we have with us and at such times maybe 10 year old ears to listen and a chubby hands to hold onto would not have been such a bad thing, especially when she is your daughter too.

At 11, she would take on a huge family for her daughter’s safety and would never budge till the issue was spelt out in front of everyone, understood and the concerned person was shamed and sent away for good. I had been sexually abused by my father’s dad. She truly was a one-woman army.

At 17, after my class teacher complained about my underperformance in the class (my first time ever), she would tearfully take me to a gold jewellery shop and buy me earrings and ask me to keep it as a remainder to keep fighting and just put my best of efforts that's all. She would fight for us to choose degrees of our choice with such strength that father would have no choice but to give in.

At 19, she would walk holding my hand, carrying the remainder of the gifts I made (which my ex-boyfriend had tossed in front of my house) and tell me that this was never love and there are good men in this world while watching me dispose of the gifts tearfully.

At all stages, she was the best friend I could have ever asked for. This greatly influenced me. Friendship in a relationship is a beautiful combination indeed.

The amazing teacher

Mom and dad made sure we had a lot of dance practice, paintings, cricket, and play. There was also a library of books at my home and absolutely no book was off the limit. I remember reading a hard hitting Tamil novel called Agalya with steamy scenes and walking for days red-faced.

When it came to studies, she was a typical Indian mom. You can come either first second or worst third place in the class and luckily we managed to. She will also be the first in row, holding her hands as if in prayer with tear filled eyes seeing us perform on stage or winning any prize.

I love maths even today and all thanks to mom’s techniques.

She would make it a part of our conversations. When we are being fed breakfast (yes, well into our teens because mom!) or even when I am frantically painting my canvas shoes for Wednesday's she will be going “twelve four’s are forty-eight, remember to complete the brinjal rice (which I detest) before you enter this house”.

At the start of school year, mom and dad will help us cover the notebooks with brown cover and label them. We reserve the best labels to our pet subjects, so botany gets a Pikachu label. So, mom in turn will choose tiger and lion labels for (yes!) maths and actual tell me that this year, you will be a tiger in maths and give me a hug. She would also make exam preparations on of the sweetest time ever by rewarding me a single rectangle of dairy milk for a page filled with correct answers.

She grew with us, from a strict mother who never hesitates to give a thrashing, to allowing down herself a bit, addressing her anger through yoga and meditation classes and became the best friend to us. She taught us it was okay and essential to change ourselves whenever it was possible and for the good.

We moved out of our home for education and when we came back it was filled with kisses, hugs and a table full of special dishes for the week.

Things seemed to look perfect. I wanted to marry someone of my parents choice (the past had left a huge scar), growing in my career and was looking forward to a normal future.

Then our lives changed.

The reversal of roles

In 2017, she was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. That was after months of prayers, visits to temples to clean the house of “something” that she was alone able to see. We would spend a nighmarish 2017, hearing her describing her delusions every night over the phone and losing sleep. I would pray to all Gods I have ever heard to help us out by some miracle. I would see her move from the fierce woman to a sleepless and timid lady.

It was extremely unfair. If at all life wanted to give her a break, this is not the way it should have been, I told myself. The whole ordeal shattered our faith in religious systems, supersitions and anything without a scientific explanation and remains so even today. It would in turn give me the strength to speak up about mental health in a public forum, to friends. Mental wellbeing has no special bias for strong people folks.

Once when she was asleep (thanks to the treatment working), I had to take her phone for calling a friend. I noticed my photo in her lockscreen and as phone wallpaper (she never had any before). I tearfully woke her up and asked her the reason.

She muttered sleepily “..because I get a positive feeling when I look at your pictures”.

I broke off completely and remember crying for hours. All I could see was a child, holding onto my hand and sleeping blissfully. At that moment I realized that it will never be the same again.

Despite all that horrors she was going through, she was holding on to a little something that gives her positivity, her daughter’s face. I will never find a better textbook example of strength or mother’s love ever.

Today..

She fought the difficult phase but that battle, the medication ended up giving a new personality to her - a slightly fearful, indifferent mom and she moved away from us emotionally. Of course, she is perfectly normal, runs the house well but the years of fight changed her. She would tell me words , behave which she never would have otherwise and which she is not aware of herself. I used to wait for the rare occasions when I get glimpses of mom's old self and then cry when I no longer see her.

Today I am different. I no longer wait for it because the person in front of me is my mother.

She needs us to understand her more than she ever knows and we do.

She loved us in all our versions, through our ages, through her turbulent times, mistakes, repeated mistakes and mess. That is the lessons in love she had taught us.

Loving someone truly does require the greatest strength one could ever muster.

I love you mom and thank you for being everything to me. We will keep the fight going mom!