Amma

When I asked her what happens to food after I eat it she told me that there's a grinder in my stomach and each blade of this grinder is a god and these gods break down my food for me.

I once had a major health related problem. It got so bad that my hands had reacted to some homeopathic medicines which resulted in them swelling up with a bad rash. This was 10 days before the dreaded 10th grade exams. My mother silently wept for me, slept by my side and suffered with me.

I hated my two years in high school. I had a typical fat chick's high school life like it's shown in movies. I lost my cousin and aunt that year, there was a huge wedding in the family at that same time. I didn't go to school for 3 months because I was depressed. Teachers thought I was stupid. But she pushed that all away telling me to take my own time. She understood.

My uncle called me abominable when I was 14. My family thought I was stupid to take an arts subject. Everyone laughed at me when I dropped out of my master's course in India. They laughed harder when they gotto know I was going to England to do a master's in an arts subject. They made fun of me because I cried for home when I was in England, rebuked me for coming home twice in the same year and said mean things about my family. Many people think I'm a spoilt only child with rich parents. I told my mother I'm gonna earn my own money because all these people make me feel ashamed of being daddy's little girl, she just said this - But you are daddy's little girl, what's wrong with that? Esp because you're lucky to be one.

She calls me up whenever she coughs, sneezes or wakes up in the middle of the night because she imagines that I was calling out for her. Mother's keen sense for her children, she says. She simply checks on me, shyly says she loves me and hangs up.

I love my mother. I cherish her. She has helped me be a child, be innocent through her innocence and she's helped me preserve the human quality in me called love.