Photograph

Every morning when I am almost ready to step out through the garage door, I stop for a moment, and look at a picture in the living room - somehow I got this idea that if I see that face in the picture smiling at me - I will have a good day. I see her smiling every day. Some days her smile is more dazzling - as if she is proud of me - as if she tells me how proud she feels watching her little shy girl heading to a publisher’s office to talk about a book she has just finished writing.

The lady in the picture is my Mom - who passed away many years ago, when I just graduated from the university. From very early in my life, as a little girl, I was a bookworm … and my passion grew and grew, unhindered …being in a small city of a developing country, not that I had ample opportunities to read literature, but because nobody ever stopped me from reading any books which came my way, and because my parents were completely on board with my passionate reading habit.

My mother never went to college or university, she got married when she was eighteen. After elementary, she completed high school curriculum from home, and was trained in music and art, and also was told to learn housework, because that’s what ultimately she would be doing. Later she had five children, and as was normal in those days, she took care of a large extended family of in-laws, brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces.

The most tragic incident in her life happened was that her father passed away all of a sudden from meningitis, leaving a family of his old mother, young wife and eight children. The other exceptional incident which turned her life upside down, was the partition of their homeland, and consequently leaving an affluent, comfortable life, and all precious memories for an uncertain future.

I was born in a family devastated with the partition, and I was born to a mother who selflessly devoted her time and energy to the re-settlement of that torn family. I didn’t have an affluent or a comfortable childhood, but I was fortunate to have a mother who inspired me to get the best education as was possible in that circumstances. She didn’t go to college, but she made sure her daughter did.

My mother used to work tirelessly all day so everybody else was able to continue their work - from morning till night she barely had any rest. All her life she cooked from day-break till late noon, and had very little food for herself. She often skipped breakfast - either she didn’t have time, or there wasn’t enough food for everyone to share.

But, she was the best story-teller I have ever seen. Her father worked as a manager in a tea-garden, and she had a blissful childhood in a bungalow on the top of a hill. Her most beautiful memories were her father playing devotional songs on the piano, and of her playing hide-and -seek with the siblings in the pineapple orchards. Music was inherent in the family - her brother played flute when she sang songs.

My mother was mostly too busy to spend time chatting with us, but on some evenings, she had the opportunities to tell me and my sister all the stories of the tea-garden where she grew up. I loved to listen to those stories so much that I imagined myself to be frolicking in that garden, or singing songs with my grandfather playing piano - who I had never seen.

Now when I start writing a story, I often ponder - how good was I my mother describing her childhood days in every detail. She used to describe how different kinds of tea were brought to her father in tiny cups, so he could taste and smell from each one of them. He didn’t have a degree as a tea-taster, but I imagine, he acquired that fine quality by experience and by his fine sense of smell. From the words spoken by my mother, almost like a reverie …I used to imagine a handsome man who had many artistic qualities, but who also used to play tennis and ride a horse to visit other tea-gardens in that area! How charming he must have looked!

My mother also talked about pythons who used to hide in the pineapple orchard. The workers in the tea-garden were not afraid of them. They often used to catch and tie them with ropes, and put them into wooden boxes. My mother remembered, sometimes those pythons used to free themselves breaking the ropes and escape out of the boxes. She heard their hissing noises, and watched them get out of the boxes.

Those pictures remained so vivid in my memory as if I my self had those experiences, although in my life I never had any opportunity to watch any python, or roam around in orchards on a valley.

Among a few keepsakes she never parted with, I have seen a flute and a book of music notations. Her brother, who was only two years older than her, was her closest friend, and companion, who encouraged her singing, writing poetry, embroidering beautiful motifs on silk fabric, used to play the flute. He was the one who wrote her name with calligraphic dexterity on the book, and the brass flute had his name engraved on it, He suffered from tuberculosis and passed away at the age of twenty-two. My mother saved those two tokens till the last day of her life, and I could feel her affection and pain for the brother she lost so many years ago.

I will probably never be as selfless, as humble, as kind as my mother was, but she taught me how to stand up with dignity against all odds, and never to get defeated in adverse situations. My mother ignited in me the imagination and creativity of story-telling, which is the path I have chosen to tread. She smiles at me every morning, every day - from the photograph of a young bride, which is the emblem of a story of an exceptional woman’s struggles, journey and ultimate victory.

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