Mother’s Day and mothers

I am no purist, but I have known some very strange mothers in my time. In school, there was this girl who would come in every day with torn uniform, scratch and burn marks on her hands and legs and putrid, left-over food in her dabba. Her eyes would get a faraway, haunted look when asked about her mother. Don’t know what’s become of her since then. Wonder how she celebrated mother’s day yesterday.

Mothers, of course, come in all shapes and sizes. There’s the slim, jeans- and- boots wearing, chewing gum -masticating ones in their early twenties, with their Lois Vuitton bags and their straightened and streaked hair, mostly found outside South Mumbai schools; there are the tradition- bound, sari-clad and long suffering ones of the Indian soap industry-and of course, there are the martyred ones of Bollywood movies, victims of circumstance and poor screen writers.

Some mothers compete with their daughters and more or less over shadow them when it comes to dressing and keeping up with the latest fashions and fads. There are others who become more helpless and dependent on their children, the older they get. There are a few mothers I know, who so dominate their children’s lives, that the kids appear smothered. And of course there are other mothers who seem to have escaped being born with the maternal gene altogether. Buoyant, independent and wholly unfettered these are the mothers who climb mountains, bungee jump and learn to fly planes in their eighties.

The most unlikely mothers turn out to be earth mothers. Mia Farrow, sparrow-like East Coast and vulnerable- looking, became mother to a veritable United Nations of a brood of natural and adopted children.

The rebellious, inner- demon –haunted, Angelina Jolie herself a Hollywood brat, became the symbol of universal motherhood for the world.

And closer home, beauty queen and self-confessed diva, Sushmita Sen, embraced early motherhood by adopting a beautiful baby girl. Motherhood is the most easily- clichéd of all stereotypes. Mothers are by definition, good, pure, noble, self effacing and nurturing. However, this is mostly a cliché, and doesn’t always translate in to reality on the ground.

There are mothers who militate altogether against this concept: career obsessed mothers, self-centred mothers, pushy, ambitious –for- their- kid’s -mothers, grasping mothers and mothers who show no concern for their kids at all.

What kind of mother do I have? Let me see now: a large-hearted, brave, strong, cigarette- smoking, vodka-drinking, world –travelling, optimistic, energetic, independent, vivacious, octogenarian of a mother, who laughs a lot, doesn’t dwell on the past, is not tradition- bound, is unfettered by protocol and social niceties –and who best of all –is most unlike the typical mother stereotype.

And with her, on Sunday I celebrated mother’s day. Hope you remembered to celebrate it too, in your own way.

s_malavika@dnaindia.net