HOMAGE TO MY MOTHER ON HER BIRTH CENTENARY

HOMAGE TO MY MOTHER ON HER BIRTH CENTENARY

No one in the family knew her date of birth, even my elder brother who was born when she was only fifteen years old. Looking for birth certificates was out of the question, for I don’t think they were issued during those times. School leaving certificate did not exist and if they did, were not insisted upon, for most women did not study beyond the fifth standard and by that time, they were of marriageable age. My mother was married when she was only thirteen and left for her in-law's place soon thereafter.

The only thing certain was the month and the star she was born under. Birthdays were not celebrated not as per the date of birth, but as per the stardate which varies from year to year and the celebration was by way of puja at the nearby temple. As the date for delivery of my elder daughter was drawing close, she would say that she expected her to be born on her star birthday. She was nearly correct except for the fact that my daughter was born one day earlier. That was how I deduced that her star centenary falls on the 29^th of October this year.

I do not know how we would have celebrated it had she been alive. Maybe a grand function where all relatives and friends would be invited and a special day celebrated and at the end of the day, get back to our routine. She’s been gone for the last eighteen years and the only time we remember her is during the Shradh performed on her death anniversary, which again is as per the Thithi and not the date, every year.

My mother was the eighth child of a large family of ten children. She had three elder sisters, four elder brothers, and two younger brothers. She was born in the Tamil month of Aippasi under the star Visakha in the year 1919. Her father Subramanian, also known as Subba Iyer was an Executive Engineer which in those days was a position of eminence. I derive my name from him and that’s why the surfeit of Subramanians (with quite a few on my father’s side also) in the entire family. Her mother Subbulakshmi was a strong and authoritarian lady, which trait was an absolute necessity to run such a large family. My mother was named Lakshmi (there was also a surfeit of Lakshmis). Along with the intelligence she inherited from her family, she also imbibed traits of humor in her character and which endeared her to everyone she met. But in later years there was a tinge of sarcasm that crept into her interactions. May be the effects of aging and the need for more attention

She was small of build, fair and good looking. Though her schooling stopped when she was in her fifth standard, in her later years it was her native intelligence that carried her through the rest of her life. She was a voracious reader and that was her window to the world. Married at thirteen, became a mother at fifteen, she accompanied my father with a year-old child to far off Delhi at the age of sixteen and widowed at forty-four. I can only imagine the extent of her courage and grit, moving away from a large family to start her life in an unknown place and unfamiliar people. But whenever she talked about her earlier years, she would always remember the good times and good friends. After a couple of years, my father moved to a new job in Bombay and she was equally at ease there with the added advantage of being with close relations- her elder brother and elder sister and their families. She used to recall how they all stayed together in the same apartment in Matunga and how supportive they were of each other. After five years in Bombay my father who had completed his Cost Accountant course joined the Hindustan Shipyard in Visakhapatnam and that’s where she spent the maximum period of her life till my father passed away in 1963.

I have written about both my parents in my book ‘I am just An Ordinary Man’. I have covered a significant portion in my blog post dated 12^th May 2019, ‘Mother’s Day- A Tribute to all Parents. So, I have tried to avoid repetition, but I could not avoid but repeat a paragraph in that post and which is there in my book, for that, in a nutshell, brings out the person she was –

‘It is always our tendency to eulogize about people who are not with us anymore. I do not intend to do that for it would instill a sense of hypocrisy in my sincere efforts to paint her as the person she really was. It is only when we accept a person with all their weaknesses apart from extolling all the good things they possess, that we really love them. My mother also had her faults and this sometimes blinded her vis-à-vis relationships. I was predominant in her affections which sometimes clouded her reasoning where others were concerned. She was very forward looking and accepted many things which her generation could not, but still there was that part of her which refused to yield to perceived threats to her authority and possessiveness where I was concerned. This is only to highlight that she was very much human. But what stood out was her strength of character and her compassion.’

There will be no celebrations on her centenary. There will only be a silence filled with her thoughts and a prayer. For me paying homage to her through this post of mine I felt would be more lasting.