Monday, November 26, 2007

did someone say degrees?

Its quite interesting and quite amusing…and strange in its own way. She was the least educated of us, that too in some goddamn village school and today ive realized that all the things that she used to say were right and the whole “educated” world says the same things.

She always would force me to have a heavy breakfast…”your breakfast should be the heaviest meal of the day…never leave home empty stomach..you’ve been hungry for 10 hrs already since your dinner..have something” and mind you the tone was much harsher..

She warned me against dieting in my growing years…”this is the age to gain height..give your body something”

When i was on my own and doing pathetically bad at taking care of myself, she was like…”take care of yourself..when your hair will start greying and falling, when your skin will lose its radiance, then you’ll realize what u’ve lost and then you’ll repent not having taken care of your diet”…my trichologist charged me to tell me that I should eat a balanced meal to stop my hair from falling…duh

When I was horribly thin..(yeah..there was such a time as well)..and wanted to gain weight..(yup you heard me right…I was among the few lucky ones)..her no nonsense advice was..”just eat your normal roti subzi…but eat three proper meals” no bananas, no smoothies, ..i mean nothing wrong with that…but then she knew how enterprising I could be.

and she always repeated at every meal time "eat slowly and you'll end up eaitng less".. she forced me to eat fast coz she wanted me to eat more..

And yeah today…I swear by whatever she said. And it amazes me..that my mom..(oh did I not mention that earlier) never went to college..she barely scraped through her 12th std. from a village school…she was married off when she was in 6th std and started living with my father after her 10th. She had her first kid at 17 and her third (that’s moi) at 23.

But then she had a thirst for knowledge…she wanted to learn…she was enthusiastic about getting to know new things…and she did manage to do a wonderful job…she went to her painting classes with two kids..one of whom hadn’t learnt to walk by then…she could stitch the best dresses and salwar-suits…she was very good at embroidery…she even learnt how to repair transistors (WHY?)…

And being good at something is one thing..she would do all these things in whatever spare time she got from her house hold chores and her 3 pestering kids…I was the worst…you would never see her sit idle…

and she would even make us do all that…I have done everything from stitching to cross-stitch to embroidery to knitting…and just the amount of interest she showed in these things made us do them…she would buy those embroidery books, select a design, buy the threads, the cloth, go 10 times to the market till she found the right shades, get the design printed and then give it to us to finish…believe me, the most difficult part was already over

She would sit with the English news paper every day…that’s where she learnt most of her English from…though she couldn’t converse in the language, she would understand and enjoy English movies with us.

And yes how can I forget…she was a badminton champion…

The only thing she used to hate was cooking…she used to cook very well…I still follow her recipes…and her aloo-parathas were to die for…she used to cook limited stuff but whatever she did, it was great…but that was one task she never enjoyed…now you wont wonder where I got that from…:)

And to end it all..there was one thing which she also always used to say….which I cant resist mentioning.."tere upar har kapda achhha lagta hai”…no prizes for guessing for whom she used to say this..:)