I Bow to Thee, Mother!

Plagiarism seems to be the call of the day so I ‘lifted’ Guru Tagore’s line Vande Mataram and translated it for good measure. To make sure you don’t go running off thinking this one’s on patriotism. That one will come later at an appropriate time. So ok. You’ve worked it out now I hope. Yes. It’s about Mother. Matru. Maa. Amma. Aai. Mom. She has different names but is the universal one. She IS the universe for me.

In case you’re wondering, it is pure coincidence that today happens to be Mothers’ Day. The driving force for this post is not that. This fact is true happenstance. It is, however unlikely it may sound, a mainstream Bollywood movie that got the cogs turning in my head for this one. No. Not Om Shanti Om with SRK’s repeated roiling references to “maa ke haath ka kheer”. No. It’s not Tashan to get me wondering what sort of mom Kareena will make to Saif’s kids who should be calling her Didi. It’s a rather unlikely suspect. U Me aur Hum.

The start of the movie was what caught my attention. At the opening credits, shots of cumulus and cirrocumulus clouds (albeit with cheesy love quotes scrawled across them) against a bright blue sky turned me on. You see, I’m a sucker for the open skies especially clouds, which by the way, I could identify and classify by the age of 5 (Yes clouds can be classified, you don’t want to get me started on that one). I stuck out my antennae for a movie that promised to be a good movie.

The next hour shattered my hopes into a thousand boring porcupine quills and made me want to scream at Kajol and Ajay to go and wash the talc out of their hair. I spent the slowly passing minutes dreaming of all the nice stuff I could have eaten with the 140 bucks Cinemax had just extracted out of me wallet. The intermission was a time when I seriously considered just leaving.

But all bad things come to an end too, and so did all the “good” things on screen like desperate line dropping, flirting, mushy love couplets and pole dancers on (!) red stilettos. Surprise surprise! Kajol starts progressing into Alzheimer’s Disease. And she’s going to have a kid. Delicious predicament. Leaving aside the weird ending to the story (Bollywood ishtyle twisht) and the use of erroneous high-funda-sounding terms like “dilatation” which my friends thought were ‘gaali’s, I’d give the second half a 10 on 10. All thanks to Kajol’s stupendous performance. She really managed to convey the real condition of an Alzheimer’s patient to the masses. Yeah yeah. I know. The Big B’s done it before. So what’s new? What’s new is that the Big B’s character in Black was just a stand alone guy who really had no-one to speak of in the world. How many times do you see that except in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s fantasies? Kajol’s Piya was everything that’s real. And she was a woman. The film brilliantly portrays how DIFFICULT life becomes for everyone when the lady of the house is not at the helm. Kids don’t get the appropriate attention. Care-givers start tiring. The closest relatives get frustrated and begin blaming themselves and start feeling selfish in extreme cases. Basically, the home is turned over downside up. And let’s not get into the trauma the patient herself has to bear. Wanting to manage the house well and failing every single time is the nightmare of every housewife. And hats off to Kajol for having portrayed all this brilliantly. AB had all sorts of makeup and age on his side to portray Devraj Sahai. Kajol had the lack of it and a pair of expressive eyes to do Piya. Poor artillery, considering the amount of unseasonal showers she had caused on either side of my seat in the hall.

Well, look at me. Drifting away into the diverse colourful streams of my thought that would fill a dozen more blog posts. As usual. Well, I’d decided that this one was on the mother and it’s going to stay that way. I won’t go into things like “She gives you strength” and “She forgives your mistakes” because these arise from a bond that develops when you see a living creature emerge from you, but I’ll say this. Moms make huge sacrifices. From your first teeny breath till the time you spread your wings and fly the nest, Mom is there to care for you every whim and fancy, even if it means a little less comfort for herself. All this without a whimper. So much so, that you won’t realize it until she’s ill one day or is away.

Note to all my teenage readers out there. This Mother’s Day, do this exercise. It’ll take just a minute. Think of a typical day. Start with your waking up. Try and think of every little way your Mom makes her mark on your day. Coaxing you to wake up as you’ve switched off that darn alarm. Turning on the hot water for you to ensure you don’t freeze up. Getting your breakfast ready on time, so that you can gulp it and run for the bus that you’re late for again. Calling you up twice a day to make sure you’re OK. Reminding you that you have to finish up that project for tomorrow. All this juggled along with the little things around the house. Little things that we don’t see. Take your time to notice these things at least this one day in the year. It’ll surprise you how much our moms seem to multitask and how much this eats away their energy and how little they talk about it. And it’ll make you respect her a bit more. Give her a day off at least today. Lift your socks and put them in the right place. Wash the dishes this once. That should make you realize how tough her job is.

Anyway, all this lightning speed writing is making me groggy and I feel my reflexes weakening. Aah. I’m slipping… No, sleeping. (That’s a clichéd SGP joke in class). Even Jal can’t keep me awake now (No pun intended). So do what I suggested and see your mom in a new light tomorrow onwards.

And yes. HAPPY MOTHERS’ DAY to all the moms out there. I bow to thee.