A mother’s homage

Right now, typing this piece seems an unfamiliar task for me --a person who would spin middles at the drop of a hat. For three months now, from when I lost the light of my evening life, my golden daughter, my mind has become numb with nothingness.

It seems like yesterday that we lit Deepavali lamps together. Taking her health upsets in her stride, Rukma, true to her name, was good gold, and resiliently marched ahead shining.

A daughter enables a mother to don many avatars--a cute doll to cuddle and adorn in infancy, a puppeteer to whose strings a mother dances during her childhood, a questioning adolescent when the mother becomes her guide, her twenties where she breaks free from the nest as she becomes a career girl. Hereafter, a mother’s day is never replete without the story of the day from her full-of-life daughter.

It would be as simple as how she co-ordinated a talk by a guest speaker or how she managed to swerve her car around a ditch to reach her college. The wedding bells soon come clinking and the darling daughter dons the mantle of a wife.

The change from a mother to a confidante happens subtly and naturally. As the daughter gets involved in her role of a house maker, the calls may become less frequent but messages and emoticons take over. Even a simple thumbs up or a huggie begin to speak volumes. Sudden recipes are asked for and handed over as the young bride tries her hand at winning over the husband through the stomach.

My daughter had a career to manage too, and multiple projects came her way. But her daily time for the mother was always sacrosanct, either through a mail, a WhatsApp message or a supposed brief call extending to long minutes.

She happened to be my promoter too, sending my article link to her innumerable contacts. A girl who was in the communications line professionally had the natural flair to communicate with all. Now her WhatsApp ID is pinned on the top of my contacts list but the communication is one way. But I know that her presence is everywhere and I say a silent kudos to her for having lived her life the way she lived, never cowed down by her health setbacks, always cheerful and zealous in the pursuit of her work, with her dimpled smile indelible in the memory of any person who said even a simple hello to her.

The bountiful shared memories may last a lifetime for her grieving soulmate, and the family. God gave her a short tenure but she utilized it to the fullest, and is it not all about how you live your life and not how long you live it? We are striving to emulate her— our golden girl!