|
|
Ramblings
For My Daughter
by Sujata Ashwarya Cheema
November 13, 2005
I woke up later than usual, pervaded with Brinda’s thoughts. It’s been
some time that my daughter has gone. As I painfully left the bed to
prepare myself for the day, her tiny teddy bear slipped out of the
almirah. Her favorite one! For her gloriously tender age, she has
many-a-favorites. She loves my dangling earrings and often asks me,
“Mamma will you give this to me when I grow up”. She loves my yellow
sari and wants that too. They are all yours and I shall buy you many
more, I say, and her happiness knows no bounds. One of her favorite
stories is ‘The Three Billy Goat Gruffs’ and that of little Hanuman
devouring the sun. Not to forget her favorite Tom and Jerry cartoon and
her face animating with abandoned laughter and hurried shrieks with each
of Jerry’s escapes and triumphs over Tom.
Brinda has a way with life. With a bat of her eyelid she makes me
acquiesce to her most ‘outrageous’ demands, and justifies them with an
undeniable logic: “Mamma, I am just a baby”. It is amazing to watch her
fret over her friends, coaxing them to have juice, or shake her leg to
her favorite song “lakdi ki kathi”. She can hear it a
thousand-times over and giggle in a thousand different ways each time it
is played. Sometimes she rummages through the cupboard to find that
piece of chocolate I hide to enforce discipline. At times she succeeds,
at other times, she doesn’t. The sense of adventure on her face in this
cat-and-mouse game enlivens my life, instantly. She can coax me out of
my most desperate moments with her innumerable pecks she indulgently
gives out, perched on my lap. She knows me perfectly well and at times
our roles are reversed.
She loves to listen to stories, like all children, but she goes further.
She weaves stories with me, sometimes for me, and in her innocence
extends the realm of possibilities. Her wide-eyed wonder, incessant
questioning, and insatiable curiosity fill me with wonder and pride. She
has what I call an ‘independent spirit’ – a ‘healthy’ disrespect for
constraints and authority. She doesn’t gives into admonitions or
scolding easily, defies my ‘diktats’ with counter-questions and packages
her defenses with a disarming smile, revealing those enchanting little
crooked teeth. She knows her mother is placated, adequately.
One day, I dressed her up as a doctor and painstakingly made her
rehearse lines for the fancy dress competition at school. In one of the
mock practices, I asked her who she was and pat came the reply, “I am
Brinda”. I left her alone. The time 1:30 pm makes me very restless. It’s
my daughter’s time to come back from school. I imagine her walking
towards me with paint on her blouse, tie let loose, hairpin sitting
precariously on her beautiful, curly hair, and shoes stained with mud.
Mornings are agonizingly slow-paced these days. I am not expecting my
daughter school van’s frenzied horns. I do not go to the park anymore in
the evenings. Where’s that little monkey to go atop the monkey-climb?
I remember the day she was born, her resplendent cries, her slimy
exterior when I touched her torpidly. I had given her flesh and blood,
but I felt the stirrings of a soul anew. Since then she has grown,
acquiring a character that can just be called her very own. She is her
own perfection. She challenges me every moment to see the world beyond
my inhibitions, imagined contradictions, and selfish aspirations. With
the enchanting cacophony of her voice, she transforms the ordinary rhyme
and reason of my life into millions of brilliant vistas. She is like a
soothsayer, promising a better day, a mythmaker, fashioning a dream-like
existence.
As I reminisce and rejoice in Brinda’s thoughts, I become little more
generous, a little less angry at circumstances separating us. How
wonderful it is to be a mother, Brinda’s mother!!
Top
|
Ramblings
The Week of November 13, 2005
Will
India's Government Survive November? by Rajinder Puri
India: The Prime Minister Fettered by Dr.
Subhash Kapila
Titans in Tiny Worlds by J. Ajithkumar
Was Hinduism Invented? A Review by Aruni
Mukherjee
One Night @ The Call Center A Review by G.
Swaminathan
Towards Re-Writing A History of
Indian Architecture by Ashish Nangia
Eighteenth Century India: French and English
Rivalry by Neria Harish Hebbar, MD
What are Puranas? Are They Myths? by Dr. R.K.
Lahiri, Ph.D
Seeker's Dilemma by Vikram Karve
Healthcare for Globe Trotters by Dr. Savitha Suri
Dragons Ahoy! by Nitin Jugran Bahuguna
Filling Schools in Sindh by Zofeen T. Ebrahim
Filming People of Paradise by Atul Gupta
The New Crafts Company by Deepti Priya Mehrotra
For My Daughter by Sujata Ashwarya Cheema
The Vagabond by Dhiraj Raniga
The Mystique Land by Sai Prakash
|
|
