For The Unglued Mothers

Mothers are born flawed. If they don’t see imperfections in themselves, which is unlikely,  someone else will.  But these questions and doubts a mother faces today are unique to the times. Our grandmothers were different. They were undivided souls. They did not, most of the time, think of themselves as creatures of personal ambition. My nani raised 10 kids uncomplainingly, survived Partition, hard times and through it all, gave no indication of her pain and exhaustion. She kept an immaculate house, cooked not just staples but specials for her large family. We, her grandchildren were treated to cakes and dahi vadas, mango pickles, slow cooked tomato chutney, and to buknu,  a secret family recipe of a chaat masala unlike any other that one sprinkled on curd, on salad, or just ate by itself.

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Everything in her life was about detail, about meticulous, painstaking care for the stuff that made up her world. Her kitchen. Her bed linen. Her children. Their children. She gave and gave and gave till there was nothing left to give. My mother was tested in other ways. She was required to be just like my nani and to keep her house and raise her daughter and to cook and clean and be a tireless hostess but to also earn when the chips were down. She did it all unquestioningly. Not once did I see her ask any of us, what was our duty towards her while she was fulfilling hers? We always had three meals a day even if she had to wake up at the crack of dawn to cook them. We always had salad, raita, rotis to go with our meal. Our beds were always made, and had clean linen. The house, whether or not, the house help came, was dusted, mopped and cleaned. The sink never had dirty dishes. My school dress was always ironed. My nails cut. My life in order. She never ever asked for anything. Not even a glass of water from anyone.

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My life had different challenges. Like many women of my generation, I was born with a questioning spirit. I wanted a career and I wanted a family and I was willing to work hard at both but somewhere it became clear that I would have to compromise one to accommodate the other. I gave up a well paying full-time job to work from home. I remember being asked to go to Goa for an assignment when my son was about four or five and saying (much to the mirth of all present), “Can he go with me?”

I did not because he could not. For a long time, every professional decision was bound up with his well being.

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Today, he is 14 and I am no longer the 24- hour mother. And I am not the mother, my mother was. Or the mother I was.  Over the years, despite his best interests at heart, I have made mistakes. Not just that, my house is not out of a picture book. As I work longer hours than I did before, I depend on house help to keep the day well-oiled and am all at sea when she does not turn up. I let him eat out or order in more often than I would like it. The beds in my home are not always made. The dusting is occasional and we are divided and united by our over-dependence on the Internet, the television and the mobile phone in the little time we get together.

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Yet, there are a few take aways. My son is not dependent on me the way I was in his age on my mother. He cooks better than I did at his age. He knows, his mother will never stop working regardless of what his expectations may be. That women don’t always cook three meals and should not be expected to. That they do get angry when they are exhausted and over stretched. That they can put up their feet and ask for a cup of tea when they are tired. That boys his age should start putting in their clothes in the washing machine because if they don’t,  they may not have anything clean to wear the next morning. That women are people like them. Not just the maintenance specialists who are only expected to run a house like clock work, uncomplainingly. Who are praised for being unselfish and resilient and never asked what they are feeling.

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I feel suffocated when on Mother’s Day, we unfailingly recall the sacrifices of our mothers, their cooking, the comfort and security they gave us. Do we ask ourselves, what we gave them back? For many women, their children are their world and their home is their karmabhoomi and they happily make sacrifices because they want to make them. What about mothers however, who probably had personal ambitions but were forced to abandon them? Was my mother happy being just my mother? Did she really want to cook three meals a day, day after day through sickness and depression and unarticulated anger? Was yours? Why do we put mothers on pedestals and expect them to stay there? Why do we feel proud of the fact that our mothers never complained no matter how much pain or discomfort they were in? Why were they not allowed to be selfish once in a while? Or ask for help, support, empathy, understanding and only expected to give these inexhaustibly?

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Maybe mothers should not be the only ones expected to glue a family together. Maybe, they can be unglued sometimes and expect their families to put their pieces together. By seeing me as a person who has needs, my son hopefully will look at his spouse and think, ” Oh, my mother felt this too,” rather than saying, “But my mother never complained.” Maybe, because he sees my flaws in black-and-white, he will expect less from his partner and be more supportive of her journey through life and motherhood.

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I do not give myself credit for being the best mother I know. But, I do know that my son thinks of me as a real human-being and not some idealised, over maximised idea of selfless love being handed down from generation to generation. Sometimes, just sometimes, I allow myself to feel proud of that.