My mother's daughter

After forgetting most of my mother's birthdays, I told her today that she dare not forget my birthday tomorrow. She laughed and said that 'You are forgetting something. I gave birth to someone on this day, so may be its a bigger day for me than its for you.' And I realized that it indeed must be a big day for her.

Thanks to stupid Freud and his Oedipus complex, I have always blindly loved my father. Even if I am angry at him, I call up my mother and bitch about him or worse, vent out my anger at her. However, I will be 27 tomorrow and I realized that even though my father dominates a lot of practical aspects of my life, emotionally, I am my mother's daughter.

Actually, me, my mother and my maternal grandmother- we form a sort of a circle. One is a typical Rajasthani woman, with her obsession with colour yellow, who has stayed in Jaipur all her life with her gorgeous husband and four kids; another shifted her roots to an alien and monstrous big city to move in with her husband and a new strange family and another one who moved from one metro to another in her twenties, to start a new chapter in her life (if not a new life altogether). But all three of us are just the same. Wild, resolute, stubborn, loving, crazy, rebellious, sweet, honest, liars, impulsive, emotional, manic depressives, addicts, rooted, free, lonely, attached, mothers, daughters.

A lot of things have been passed on to me by these women as a legacy and some of them I have imbibed and snatched from my mother over the years. Her metamorphosis into this immensely powerful and independent woman, her blind faiths, her lost of innocence, her fall to a child like state, and then her grand rise from ashes like a phoenix, have been the most inspiring things in my life.

While my father has taught me the value of hard work, principles, innovations, good health and savings accounts, my mother has taught me how to actually live and more importantly, how to really love, and all this, without ever preaching anything. This 27th birthday is most definitely dedicated to my mother.