Random Musings

A friend asked me yesterday, 'What's your mother's name?'. I was quite amused by the question, till she told me the reason. The background goes that her grandmother used to make all the grandkids call her by name because with age she realized that there were hardly a handful of people who called her by her first name. This decision of hers, led to all the grandkids calling her by her name. An almost unthinkable thing in any Indian family. But because she had initiated it from the time they were very young, that is how my friend and her cousins addressed their grandmother. When that piece of information sank in, i realized the depth of that question. In a family set-up like ours in India, the relationships overtake names. And especially a lady, once married, would mostly be addressed with a relationship. She would be a 'bhabhi'(sister-in-law),a 'didi' (elder sister), a 'chachi',a 'mami' (aunty) graduating on to a 'dadi' a...

The other day, at a party, i heard a young girl talk about her parents where she mentioned that she had a "motherly-father" and a "fatherly-mother". It immediately struck a chord in me. The roles of father and mother are so pre-set in our minds, that a nurturing, caring and loving role is always assumed to be that of the mother's. While my mother is no less caring, loving or nurturing, my father was an equally involved parent all through our growing years and more inspite of being a very busy man professionally. Today, when everyone is talking about their mothers, it's only appropriate for me to reminisce a little about my father. They say there's no love as unconditional as a mother's love. Being a mother myself, i know that to be the absolute truth. But, i would also like to add, there's no unconditional love like a father's too...for my father was no less than my mother and i celebrate both of them today... It seems strange to m...