I Don’t Want To Talk About My Mom

Raseed-E-Zindagi — from a tawaif’s tr... Sameer, the pedestrian poet

I Don’t Want To Talk About My Mom

She’s been dead for two years, but she’s going to be alive for much longer

Still from the movie Pakeezah

An edited version of this story appeared in The Tribune.

I am embarrassed to talk about my mother. Let me delineate that milquetoast statement with a pop culture reference to make this more, for the lack of a profound synonym, relatable.

Remember, like it was yesterday, when Karan Johar inexorably fixated on Alia Bhatt this, Alia Bhatt that, Alia Bhatt every two words I spout. The diminutive, baby-faced mascot of cute emojis had to sit the pouty gentleman down, and I will paraphrase his obsessive condition here, she said: You are not my mother! STFU.

Freud has said: If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.

You will empathise if you find yourself overselling your mother outside the kitchen. Wait a minute, isn’t that what you do? My mother is the best cook in the world! As if she has no other function.

My mother has. Cooking, cleaning and ghar-sansar; she’s been much more than that.

I was recently re-watching Govinda’s old interview on the talk show Rendezvous With Simi Garewal. He answers every question with Meri maa kaha karti thi. His devotion to his mother is sweet, but after a few mentions it begins to sound mawkish, considering he’s sitting on the bench with his spunky and hilarious wife Sunita Ahuja, who lets his wallow. She has a thick hide. Govinda’s mother Nirmala Devi was an exceptional classical singer. He mentions that only in passing and keeps referring to her platitudes pertaining to his career, upbringing and lifestyle. He reveres her but only as his mother. The lady’s life before him is glossed. My guess is the stigma attached to a female performer in the fifties, nearly overlapping with a tawaif’s profession, being harshly judged by society’s standards for a woman working to raise her children when the husband falls on bad times. This can lead to her child growing up to paint her as a saint of aphorisms. Meri maa kaha karti thi is not where I want to be wistfully hanging up side down — an old vibes tale.

Ever since I wrote my mother’s memoir, on her life as a tawaif before and after me, the title of which I find too long to type and refer in its abbreviated form as TLC (acronym for tender loving care), I have been talking nonstop about her. I wish to wash my hands off her. As timelines refresh, I look forward to when I do not have to mention her name, except when I am paid to reflect like this gig. My ears may voluntarily turn deaf any moment now hearing my own nasal voice howl a thumri about her khooobsurti, hunar, adab, shokhi, adaa, saadgi and her unparalled akal-mandi arriving by the accidental criss-crossing of her gardish ke sitare.

My mother has been dead two years. Grieving isn’t a daily ritual like a prayer when prayer itself isn’t a habit I wear like an undershirt. I want to move on to the next story. I want to tell my own story. It may not be as raw, brave, courageous (same as brave), poignant and inspiring as hers, as reviewed and reported in the media. That has made me jealous, unapproving of her posthumous glory. She’s toast. In sync with the vainglorious times we inhabit, let’s move on to the next chapter: Me, me, me.

My mother had a rough, tumultuous life, and thereof she then had the smarts to make my life velvety and painless. Even privileged I would say. Not entitled, which is debatably a bulwark of lineage, but privilege, sure, in my case elite boarding school education, a sheltered childhood and a healthy dose of pep talk. Bade naazo se paala hai tujhe maine, she said, kisi baat ki kami nahi honay di hai. You can almost hear a taraqqii-pasand sher, a ghazal, a melody in her tender voice. Yes, I know, I should not be making fun of her. But here’s the thing: she would dil khol ke welcome it. Part of surviving with grit is the ability to make light of it. Humour alleviates suffering. She balanced it stupendously.

I don’t get to complain about having a hard life. Nonpareil to hers, mine’s a moonwalk eclipsed by her strife. She had improved me in her mould. I unctuously resent her for it. She gets all the smoky, sultry, messy, masaledar seventies disco and bang-bang drama. Mine is lyrically nineties post-existential art house as watching a red balloon float into the blue, blooming sky. After a few minutes, one gets bored of staring at something so dull and uneventful. What else is a balloon’s fate other than fading into the white sun? I ask myself if that’s all I have to do for the rest of my life, hover in the shadow of my mother’s brilliant, meteoric rise in death.

In the dark comedy film Throw Momma From The Train, every time Danny DeVito, a wannabe writer sits at his typewriter to punch a story, his irascible old mother interrupts him with an errand that makes him lose his train of thought. He struggles with his weird imagination to poison her Pepsi, impale her with a surgical scissor, make her trip down a basement staircase or by blowing a trumpet into her ear. I wish for a similar confrontation. I imagine my dear and positively departed mother punching my Adam’s apple and saying: Bas, chup kar, mujhe bolne de. Let her nautch ghost dance. Touché.

Actually, talking about her did not come naturally to me. The first time I was on stage at a literature festival to talk about my mother shortly after the release of her memoir, I was convinced that the glare of the strong light focused on us was partially blinding me. Nervous energy was clouding the other half. I was shaking like a leaf, my co-panellist, human rights activist Naseema Khatoon informed me later. She was raised in a brothel. She spoke eloquently, formidably about her mother. What she said allayed my fears of speaking on stage, interacting with a crowd, facing a spotlight; things I zealously avoid as I consider my work done in the written word.

She said: Hum andheron se nikalkar ab roshni mein hain, aur jo log ab tak roshni mein thay woh ab andhere mein hamey sunn rahe hain.

We emerge from the darkness into light, and those who were in the light now heed us in the dark.

Her encouraging words lit my tail. From then on it became todo sobre mi madre. I am able to re-direct the focus light on to my mother. When words fail me, I say: Just read the damn book!

I am, however, unequivocally abstemious of well-intentioned compliments from readers patting me for bringing my mother’s story to the fore, for making her famous. You are so brave, it takes a lot of courage, I hear. No. Bravery and courage were not silver-stacked in my quiver to pull out at convenience. It was just about plucking the right sur in her voice, her truth. I am, what we call in political parlance, the spokesperson for her story. I don’t want to take any credit for it. If only my mother would briefly return without spooking (and ghungroos), to inform that I didn’t make her famous, it’s them readers, and instead of me, they should never stop talking about her.

For, if this serves as a fitting tribute to her who is often reductively introduced as my mother, but whom I always re-introduce as a woman of her own making, her own personhood first before any permanent labels are applied; this sher of Allama Iqbal, read aloud in Pakeezah’s closing shot, places the writer as merely a gardener in the splendour.