I have been meaning to write a reminiscence post about my father. Put everything down before it fades away. It’s 17 years since he passed away. Already my mind eludes pieces of how life with him was also very difficult. I wanted to do that post before father’s day this year, June 21st. But before that as one night I lay my head on the pillow, trying a new recommended sleep strategy for insomnia, I started thinking about people whom I am grateful to in life. That is how I thought about her that night. My Mother. After I thought about her in terms of my gratefulness, I couldn’t think of anything else. And that is how this post came about. Before the father’s post. Mother before the father. Always.

While my father gave me hedonistic and generosity values, my mother really built my core, the operating system and the kernel, if you will. I was born to my mother as a third child, a girl, with a physical disability. I have right arm phocomelia. She later told me that after my birth my grandpa (father’s dad) wanted her to not have a sterilisation operation so that there could be another grandkid, an able bodied boy.  But my mother stayed strong in face of the pressure and in absence of my father (3rd kid is just ancillary… meh) and got her operation. She must have assessed the challenge that now lay before her?

(I grew up in Mumbai.) I don’t have very early memories of coping with my disability, physically. But I realize this. It mustn’t have been easy for my mom to watch and adapt and help me adapt. For example, even as a toddler I couldn’t have learnt to turn on my right side while sleeping without rolling away completely. She used to put a pillow by my right side, and perhaps that is why I still can’t sleep very well without a pillow at my right side. I am told that I used to butt drag instead of crawling on all fours like children do, normally. I have memories of falling down the staircases regularly until quite later, both inside the house and outside, sliding and tumbling. When you have a child who does routine things differently, most people look at the parent sympathetically and offer plentiful unsolicited advice (you should watch her more, keep the door locked, did you step out during an eclipse when pregnant, and so on). It could have been the easiest thing for my mom to just keep me inside the house wary of being pitied or chided by others. But instead, oh my mother!

She assigned me chores of taking out the garbage every day, fetching knickknacks from anna’s shop. I was the small errands person in the house. My mom made me go to the vegetables market with her every third day (made me, since I hated it, as there was enough muck and touching, brushing and groping). She shopped for our family of 5 and she couldn’t carry all the stuff back herself. So I had to accompany her and carry back some bags. Not once was I spared because I couldn’t possibly carry heavy stuff without juggling it between hands.

I have a distinct memory of my mother taking me to all these places, hospitals, where there would be a lot of other children with disabilities, trying to get my disability and the extent of it certified by government doctors (that certificate is the most important document in my life, btw). I remember a physical therapy room, where I was made to do grip, strength and flexibility exercises. I remember being at a meeting of doctors in a Pune hospital (yea my mom dragged my little ass to other cities too) where I was very patronizingly disrobed and made to stand in the room, while the doctors assessed if my disability could be corrected, which they concluded, couldn’t be. (This was the only time that my disability was ever assessed, by my mom running pillar to post. I haven’t gotten to it yet again as an earning, fully grown adult.)

Learning to write and eat with my left hand must have come naturally to me, but getting dressed on my own, carrying my own heavy school bag, traveling in crowded buses while standing, wouldn’t have happened without my mother wanting it to happen. I was regularly teased by other kids in my school, in the school bus and in the neighbourhood, verbally and gesturally mimicking my disability. Yet, everyday when I got home from school, my mother very indulgently and excitedly asked me about my day at school and what I had learnt. There was no space for me to discuss or vent out my grief and anger at being teased. She helped me study everyday, she ensured that I was getting top marks and that was what kept me confident at school. My teachers loved me for being a bright student, and that fuelled my confidence further. My mom taught me to draw and to use my voice in elocution and theatre. She never said ‘no’ or ‘don’t’ to me. I was pushed to explore my physical prowess by simply not telling me not to. One summer vacation when I was 12, I was severely wounded three times by falling as I learnt to ride a bicycle with one arm. And while my mother tended to my wounds, I don’t remember her saying to me ‘be careful’ or ‘stop for now’ or ‘don’t do it’. 

My mother never let me be weak, by not telling me to be strong. By not trying to protect me. By not expecting me to fail. She expected me to do everything well, and I did. In her eyes, I saw an able-bodied me, the best of her three kids and I became the best, smartest kid in the neighbourhood, in the school and in the extended family. I never hid in the shadows. In hindsight, my mother managed to channel my furious and desperate energy into a solid, stable system. And she did all this by herself. I doubt if my father was ever around to share her anxiety or discuss how to go about raising me. (Well, he helped in other ways, but that is for the Father post.)

My mother is a graduate (English honors). She used to ace her class in studies and athletics. She could have had a career in medicine, if not for some family interference. She is head-strong, strong-willed, self-reliant, unapologetically opinionated, physically agile, and the smartest woman I know. And she raised me to be like her.