Amma@80.com

What a milestone, from Guruvayur to Gurgaon, via Ernakulam, Delhi, Bangalore and an occasional trip tp the US, this amazing lady turns 80. Even today she can be as assertive and as gentle as she was while I and my sister Deepti were being brought up by her in the 70s and the 80s. Even today she has the same zeal to see her granddaughter and grandsons educated and independent.

She left her home in Guruvayur, just a couple of years my grandfather passed away as a young bride of 21 years of age and moved to the town of Ernakulam into a joint family. That must have been quite a change for her considering that she was stying alone with my grandmother in Guruvayur which must have been a rather sleepy village. The temple was there, yet it did not have the attention it has these days as the religious fervor of our people seems to be at its peak now. I was born a couple of years later and then in the year 1970 she and I moved with my father to Delhi. I remember her struggling to adjust in that city, trying to speak Hindi (she was thorough in written Hindi but her spoken Hindi is another story in which she thinks in Malayalam and speaks in Hindi). Our landlady Mrs. Sainani was a gem of a person and she was my mother’s mentor. Amma learnt well from her mentor. In that same house my sister was born, a decade after me.

Amma brought us up rather strictly and she seemed to have a very clear and rigid path for us. She loved sports and she made us play games and she even improvised by converting the dining table into a table tennis table with the net being some books kept inverted. we played and had fun but we had to learn the rules of the game along with the fun. She ensures that we played games at school, whether it was Kho-Kho, lawn tennis or basket ball and she tried hard but neither me nor my sister were inspired by sports. Both of us loved and still love reading and did not love running around and hitting balls as much! Lessons, school and studying were sacrosanct. We could not be tardy on that front and she kept a sharp eye on our study hours as well as our grades but to her credit she never ever dwelled on some “below her expectations” grades and always told us to study better for the next exam or test. She made us participate in all extracurricular activities and that again while was fun, had to be for learning and for understanding. We there fore learnt Indian classical music and dance for about 15 years of our lives, never mind the long walks to our classes in the evenings, 3 days a week.

Amma was very matter of fact, she never praised us, praise had to come from others not from self our from within the family. We used to listen to our uncles and aunts talk about their children and their achievements, waiting for my mother or father to talk about us but they would just be listening to the others with a smile. I do miss being hugged and cuddled as a child, it was pure love from them but not a very demonstrable love. Both me and my sister understood that love was all about good books, good food and trips to meet family and summer vacations in Kerala our home state. I participated in the Republic Day parade in India and was the head girl in school and after a quick smile it was about getting on with the other tasks in life.

As we grew and became adults, she remained involved in our higher education, graduation and post graduation, and she is still disappointed that I did not study to become a doctor. I was made to write the entrance exams to the top medical colleges in India and even was on the waiting list for All India Institute of Medical Science and did not make it year. She made me try another year but I gave up, part not being interested and part not having the patience to try again. I instead went on do a graduation in sciences and the do a program in law in the best law college in the country, in the University of Delhi, equivalent to Juris Doctor in the US. I worked with some of the fortune 500 companies and now work with a company in the AI space and I work in HR. My sister went on to study economics and then do a degree in MBA from the George Washington University in the US and worked with the Big 5s, She now does a global role in HR as a Senior Director with Gartner, so proud we are of her.

Amma looked after my father through a debilitating and degenerative disease and was his primary care giver for the 9-10 years the condition made him more and more dependent, It was not easy, we were in the periphery as secondary care givers and to see her strength through this was amazing. She was the woman who kept his haemoglobin levels high till the ned by feeding him juices and soups towards the end when he could not even swallow. The last treating doctor who declared him dead when the end came asked to see my mother because my father did not have a single bed sore and had excellent parameters of health otherwise. Amma supported me through my career looking after my home and my daughter making sure she was welcomed home from school with. a smile and love and snacks. for 12 years Veda came home to hot meals, and snacks and to smiles and warmth. She would get her homework done before I reached home, She shows love much more easily to her grandchildren than she does to us! She is now urging my daughter to get her masters degree and at the moment the heat is on that as well as seeing her grow in her job. That my daughter will do it but after a few years of work experience is not making her that happy!! Amma is now with my sister making sure her boys attend their online classes and homework and ensuring that they grow up to be good and honest adults and successful in their education too.

She is eighty but she is active and interested in us and her grandchildren and that keeps her going. I speak with her everyday and while there is not much to say everyday, it does give me an energy to begin my day and get through the day with an honest’s days work done and look forward to the next day. There are many more small memories that I cherish about her but that I keep for another day.