Don't feel like writing anything today. My mom passed away on this day four years ago. A friend shared a picture of me and her in JW Marriott Pune 10 years ago - we were both happy and excited to be on the rooftop. The same date, different years - you live so differently.
Four years ago, my father was in the hospital and my brother and I were at home. Mom was in ICU. I get a call early in the morning - it was really really early. Still dark outside. Papa told me to come to the hospital with my brother. It's not looking good he said. I wake my brother up. He gets up with a jolt. I wake up the driver and we go to the hospital. I had started crying in the car and my brother avoided looking at me. It was close-by...the hospital. I go up and my father is outside the ICU. I don't remember if he was standing up or not. I think he stood up when he saw us. He took us inside the ICU. There was a youngish lady doctor inside. She looked upset...as if she had not seen a lot of death on her watch. Outside through a window I saw slight morning light spreading across the world. I saw pigeons. I remember the pigeons. The lady doctor said that my mother was no more. They had done all that they could do.
I saw my mom. She looked like she was sleeping. She looked as if she could wake up any time. But also she looked as if our life together as we know it was done.
Every single day I have a sense of loss of what is gone when my mum passed on. She was my best friend...my coolest friend. She was the only one who understood me in ways that was...not just the way a mom understands a child but the way a mature person understands and individual. She told me I was too talented and wise to get into the kitchen. She told me to...insisted that I always work to have money - money to take a trip, money to get help, book a cab to get away, money to take care of every single thing that goes in sustaining me. She had told me that I don't have it in me to be a conventional 'wife'...I was too reckless and adamant for that. She told me that I would always face difficulty at work because I didn't have the sense to know whether I was making someone uncomfortable or insecure. When I started freelancing and I would get bitch and slut comments on LinkedIn she had told me that this wasn't the time to back down. (This is what continues to give me the strength to carry on even now...despite the ugly resentment I see in inept people who want to take money without putting in the work. Like that person who called me names on my blog because I had commented on his work. And he was just.so.bad. Sometimes I wonder what kind of people get employment just because they live in a metro and claim to be wannabe washed out musicians or business people. They lost in one area and will lose everywhere else too.)
My mom has told me to move out of Bombay to toughen up. She had told me once that I would have to keep making my own luck with people time and time again to get over people's validation. She had recognised in me a people-pleaser who would get easily manipulated. Many many times she has told me that I would be protected by my honesty more than I would be wounded by it. And the wounds would be many and incessant.
She told me to dress well to earn well. She told me that I should develop the traits...with militant zeal...to see through people's motives. For an angry person who always sought validation...to be in a service industry...you can get very easily swayed with praise.
She had told me that a couple of friends...who I thought were really good friends...they were envious of me. She saw in me the need and ease to cut away from people and things quickly and easily. She was the buffer and sweetness that held me close to my relatives and extended family. Without her, there is no real connection and I don't even miss it.
My mom didn't just love me. She celebrated me. If I can continue to live or at least learn to live without explanation or apology, it is in no small measure to the mum I had.
To the mum I have.
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