Ode To Mom

She was born is a small town in India in 1920 to a fifteen year old Kashmiri girl who was married at thirteen and already had given birth to one other girl. Saeeda and her sister were a year apart, but had completely different personalities. Saeeda was a tom boy, playing outside, climbing trees, getting her clothes dirty, grazing her knees, playing foot ball with neighbourhood kids. Her sister was the feminine one, fussing over her clothes and hair, staying indoors listening to music. Their mother Akhtar was born to a dainty Kashmiri woman, light hair, blue eyes, pale skin. Saeeda inherited her father's darker genes, a sub continental gentlemen. She was a child bride as was common in the early 1900s in the subcontinent of India. They were Muslims by birth but grew up in a secular India, with Hindu and Sikh neighbours all sharing their festivals and food. It was not common for girls to go to college, but with the influx of the colonial British Raj, more and more schools were set up where girls could go for an education. At fifteen Akhtar, my grandmother was widowed, and remarried. She went on to have two more children by the time her teens were over. The second husband took a second wife, leaving nineteen year old Akhtar to fend for herself with four young children. A formidable task for a young girl with no education and littte economic or social support. She was a smart woman in that she realized one thing very earlier on in a life which would be fettered with hardship. She understood that the only passport to freedom for her children lay in getting an education. She took up sewing to earn her keep while she sent all four children to local schools. Both elder girls excelled in academics, showing a penchant for languages. Saeeda became one of the first young Muslim to chuck her veil in the then 1930s and ride a bicycle to school, much to the disapproval of Muslim neighbours who felt good Muslim women ought to cover their heads and stay indoors. Saeeda was independant. Saeeda wanted to succeed, partly to avenge her mother's lost childhood. She became one of the first women in her day to obtain a Masters degree in Economics and went on to become a lecturer in a local girls college, by then in a new country called Pakistan. She and my father married in 1946 and went on to have three children, me being the youngest and born in her forties. She was one of the most beautiful women as described by those who witnessed her youth. She was a petite, oval faced, dark eyed woman who wore exquisite sarees and had a gentle manner. Generous to a fault one left our home without being fed and inundated with gifts. She financed the education of local children and taught thousands of young Pakistani women, later becoming the Vice Principal of the Lahore College of Women, from where she retired in the early 1980s when I was just about finishing college.
Ami as I call her and I had a special bond. When my older siblings had flown the nest, I was still her pet child. We would play house together, sharing endless cups of tea and pastry. She and I shared a sweet tooth and neither of us have changed in our somewhat unhealthy eating habits to date. Whenever I go back home we quickly celebrate by ordering sweets and cooking desserts. We are both happy rice eater, something Kashmiri's are known for. We will have rice for breakfast from dinner left overs. What she taught me was simple life long lessons that endear. Be kind, be honest, find pleasure in simple give and take, work hard, help others around you, don't be materialistic, read, write, listen to music, love your children and pets, be devoted to your husband, put family first.
On sultry, humid monsoon evenings we would share a daily evening ritual. We would sit in our porch watching it rain while we had tea and cookies. I am always reminded of how when my Ami sipped her cup of tea, her eyes would wander off to a land I could only venture to step in, the land of her thoughts. She would get this far away look, and talk of her childhood, her mother, her mother's suffering and the poverty they endured as children. She would tear up as she remembered how her mother had slaved to raise four kids on her own, how her youth had been lost to poverty and abandonement by their father. She would talk of how she missed her younger half sister who had died soon after giving birth and left Saeeda her daughter to raise. She would reminisce about her carefree childhood, how she played in sugar cane fields oblivious to the odds her mother was fighting to put food on their table.
She would also gingerly broach the subject of the condition of women in general. How they had a bigger share of sacrifice in a country which had little regard for their rights. How she had had to put up a social fight just to get an education. She said something to me that always stick with me. "Mothers rarely live for themselves, they grind away to give their children what they never had. We always live for the next generation."

Raised by a wise woman and a rebellious father I was much more vociferous than Ami. I was angry at the state of my grandmother, and at my mother's demure resignations, and the general condition of women in Pakistan. I worked and fought and took on the system with a 'never say die' attitude. I got pelted with stones by a group of bearded men, persecuted by the government for being 'ultra liberal.' And then I had to choose. Did I want my daughter to grow up back home or not? Not seemed to be consensus as my husband and I packed up some twelve years ago and left with our two kids. The price, leave everything and everyone you love behind, specially that one woman who made me possible, my Ami.
She turned ninety recently. What I wouldn't do to be by her side, but as she said, mothers rarely live for themselves, they grind way for their kids. As I grind away to give Maya the youth neither Ami nor I had, I wish it were raining and I could be having a cup of tea on my porch.

"Sometimes sorrows
have a never ending feeling
A dagger lodges within
On a one way street to the heart
An oblivion parked
On a No Exit lane
A wound that will not heal
A torture only two can feel
You hear her voice
On the other end of the line
You hear the cough that holds
Her chest....her chest that bore
The secrets of all your old loves
And shame
The hand that helped you up again and again
You wish you did not miss her so much
That thinking of her makes you ache inside
You want her voice to be enough
When nothing can be enough anymore."