Mother's Rambling Lessons on Life Imparted in Morning Walks in my Childhood

How our learnings are a talisman

It was a passage like an arbor

of fragrance and remembrance,

the time mother matched my steps,

the time she knew all the flowers.

We'd still not started counting life

as days marked by events,

we still didn't know we were stitchers

of days we'd remember, as days gone by.

She'd pointed out patches of bluebells

which grew randomly between the roses –

there's beauty in this wildness, love,

it's the soul's wilderness we need to preserve.

She told stories of the spirit,

when things were right - or horribly wrong,

how she entangled herself in herself,

but let butterflies lift the net.

I loved her as a messy hero,

she was ready to fight in the trenches,

but battlefields were always victory grounds,

merely for the fact that she got down to fight.

But the stories I liked best,

were the gentlest she'd ever told,

when she hid her histories of hurt,

and tended those who had broken her soul.

Who are we, she said, if not survivors,

to life's treacherous curve-balls,

we think we are helping others,

when all we do is to save our own souls.

Her walk is now a shuffle,

as I walk faster on the path,

her stories have still not ended,

she points out bluebells, but with a tired smile.

My mother, like so many other mothers, is a treasure house of tales. But with a twist - she is the hero of all her stories. More than the classical tales of Mahabharata and Ramayana, more than the O Henry's and Guy de Maupassant's which I devoured whilst growing up, her tales were the ones which had the deepest influence. How her resilience won over indignities piled on her in a traditional Indian family, how she turned the tables in favour of a charity she was working with when a government official poured caste slurs on her, how her relentless kindness won over a trouble-loving neighbour.

A lot of what I am, I realize, is because of those tales.

But here's what started happening as I grew.

I thought the tales were narcissistic, as they only talked about the glory of her. For a time, I started to just walk away when she commenced her stories.

Till one day, I was telling my son about something I'd done which had won me accolades, and in a flash of epiphany I realized what my mum had been doing for years.

Our stories of victory or loss, of kindness and redemption, of things which went well, and which didn't, are our character sketches - where we could be either perfect villains or flawed heroes, but where  we realize how our learnings are a talisman, and our stories of wounds our one true memorable legacy.

Hear the poem! Believe me, you will love it!

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