The magazine Time has decided to tell us about Obama’s mother who was this (white) PhD in anthropology. After all these days of building up the story of the first ‘black’ candidate who’s reached so far, the media finally wants us to think of him as legit as if we can now talk of his ‘acceptable’ side or something? Crazy.
Anyway, no point in agonizing over this duniya’s sense of do's and don'ts, rights and wrongs. Have had a nice lazy morning reading the meandering blogs of Abhinav Jain. He loves to talk of his loving 52 year old mom ( the shape of things to come in a few years when my daughter starts to announce the parental age with impunity. I mean the age by itself is not the problem, I wouldn't mind some more grey as I wouldn't mind waist length hair. In the hope that it makes one look suitably distinguished - and sexy. It is the way the nextgen carelessly shunts the parent over to a sort of passion-less territory :-)). And here’s the interesting bit – he has a persistent gang of ‘commentors’ who are all almost equally entertaining. Like there’s this continuous hyperventilation over Abhinav’s punctuation marks and why he always leaves a gap before his commas and full stops. Then there's this gang who wants to score points by being the first (or the 50th or the 100th) to post a comment. Quite a fan following of girls – has this young and single 26 year old namesake (Munnu). Each of his string of blog comments always seem to end with some anonymous haplog mail that goes blah blahHindi.haplogdotcom Malayalam.haplogdotcom kannada.haplogdotcom music.haplogdotcom radio.haplogdotcom tv.haplogdotcom (Tamil.Haplogdotcom)
I am sure there was yet another mom and son combo I had been meaning to write about – before I got called away on dire emergencies at home. By bai (‘didi, istri wala keh raha hai ye kapde aapne diya pur
Was it about my hubby and his mom? My younger bro and his mom (mine too?). Nah I I don't think so…
May be this is the onslaught of early Alzheimer’s. Am not sure how deeply I should agonize over the memory loss. Worse is what if the retrieved memory is quite a let down. Perhaps it is better to stay in this stage of ‘let me see if I can recall’…
Like nostalgia. And mushy sentimentality. Wonder if this is a necessary side-effect of blogging. Am sure everyone keeps getting called away. The other thing I wonder about is if everyone has this feeling of being vaguely guilty. At taking time out to blog. As if there are more important things to do and I am shirking from the things that make the planet go round....
(Three hours later)...Yaad aaya. Two more combos actually. Richard Branson & his mom, and SRK and his mom - both pairs as gleaned from resp autobio and bio. Anupama Chopra displays her usual assured sense of the heartbeat of Bollywood. As usual her books are total paisa-vasool and sometimes she uses phrases that resonate long after the book is over and done with. Here I love her take on Hindi movies esp of Yash Raj films that she says are never about 'the inexplicably untidy debris of relationships'. SRK's mom completely endorsed all that the son planned to do and was not around to see the heights he reached.
Richard Branson's autobio is rivetting. Am on page 136 now. The SRK book gives a great feel for the superstar's life, especially its unreality. It even has a 'cast of characters' in the beginning - that theatrical it is... The 'cast of characters' has real people as well as Gabbar Singh listed.
Otoh, RB's is so real so down to earth that you feel you can be one of his friends too, invite him over for dinner to your home for potluck perhaps and he'll come.
And his mom. The sort of things done thru childhood to instill values - make him bicycle 50 miles to make him independent, continually find things ('work') for the kids to do, ensure that the company at dinner was as interesting (often more interesting) than the food, always valued the children's opinion....
My indefatigable mom is no less come to think of it. (Don't want to tell her I'm writing this. She may get a heart attack or something what with our constant 'loggerheads' way of reaching out to one another!) She made me and my bro human and whatever we have achieved today is as much her level of motivation. Right now, she is resident at the village of Kamarpukur, all the time going after families of beggars ensuring they send their children to come to school. Since the state schools give lunch on the other days, she feeds them breakfast everyday plus two hours of morning tuitions, and on Sunday, lunch. Busy, busy, busy with her Spoken English classes as well as Computer classes (we sent our old desktops over to her) for the youth of the village. Her logic to go off into the boondocks was that we grew up and did not need her services any longer. Needless to say, they all adore her. The streets resonate with 'amma' , 'amma' wherever you go with her. She loves this name far more than her own - Nivedita.
As Gerald Durrell has said of his mom in 'My Family and Other Animals', our mom is a credit to how well we have brought her up :-)
And now that I am reading RB , let me surf the net for what I wanted to check out - the sound of Tubular Bells.
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