Dear Mum

Dear Mum,

I know you’ve been for long complaining that I have changed and don’t really give you my heart’s outpouring as I used to vomit earlier on a severely loose stomach with details, so I thought today of making up for some of it, with a little mental sentiappa here.

Let’s begin with the thank you’s so that the blaming fingers are more easily buried. When my peeps sometimes turn around and look at me with aghast faces for having said something scandalizing and gross and put up that silliest of all questions of, “How could you?” even when they witnessed how and what I just did, I manage to pacify my detractors by saying it is in my genes. Thank you for being half mad and passing on that streak and justification to me. The world seems very placated with advancing the ‘genes’ syndrome almost sympathising with me as though I have caught a chronic disease and suffer incessantly under the pangs of its pressure to be outrageous.

Thank you for getting me married to G even though you didn’t bother to find much about G himself after the preliminary investigations revealed that his big, fat family was a catch. The fact that G turned out to be the Gem instead is another chocolaty story. Thank you also for bearing with a grin when some of the weird, hormon-ically over charged, not-your-taste kinda oldies in the in-laws flirt with you obnoxiously just because you are a samdhan ji. I guess there is justice after all! Why should I bear them alone?

I remember today all the mischief I did and got away, which I always tell you about with the mysterious air to send you in the baffled mode-yes, I did much that I was not supposed to, right under your pretty nose and thank you for being slow in realizing it or smart enough in pretending not to.

Also that little X-rated video cassette I found wrapped in your nighties while I was fishing inside for goodies, I had no idea how fishy the ‘adult’ world could be when you and pa had gone out sauntering, became a very educational and literally eye opening popping experience for me-you have done so much good, even without its awareness-ah, such magnanimity. I feel I am born to some Mother Teresa or something, though a modern day, child bearing version.

You made me the smart kid, topping at school with my nose buried in thick books. It is a blessing that the world thinks so high of studious geeky children that they assume we would never do wrong even if we were caught red-handed. So glad also that when you and I went into the snooping missions into my brother’s cupboard and watched with gaping mouths at the discoveries within you with disdain at how little girls could write letters to him that were befitting scripts for some B-grade porn film and me with jealousy at not having any such trophies, from the appropriate gender of course, you did not ever think of doing the same in my wardrobe. Yes, two people were needed to do the brave task of ransacking his belongings for much out there was liable to cause mini strokes. Anyways wading through my piles and piles of school notes would have been a deterring task. I myself lived in the perpetual fear that a clandestine musing should not someday find its way to my teacher’s desk and be corrected subsequently for errors-you see lack of experience in those days could have marred my current fantasy par excellence status.

It is amazing however, how simply wonderful you were at making and maintaining relations. Like all the cute older boys of all the aunties we met automatically became my bhaiyyas. You know how cruel that is on a teenager, just coming of age? Smart move there-so even if I ever thought of digressing and sing even just the chorus of a famous love sing around trees with any one of them, the despicable song “Bhaiyya mere, raakhi ki bandan ko nibhana” would play in the backdrop of my mind and raakhi threads loom like little snakes around his hot frame. You gave me one biological sibling na, who managed to create much of a ruckus single-handedly, why coerce more boys to join the league? So by the time I grew up, I was the unclaimed sister of half the eligible boys in town-thank you for giving me the grit so that I could struggle even in these adversities to create my space under the sun.

I remember also the days and nights of talking on the landline phones for the stupid inventor of mobiles was born late and how you would almost always pick up the receiver from the other line wanting to make a call just when I was talking and didn’t wish to be overheard. Thank you for being sweet enough to oblige always when I said, “Mom, I am talking” instead of getting into a banter then and there and insisting on a threesome-telephonically speaking of course!

Although I love you for all the fried food and Maggie and Bread rolls you fed us with, but really, were they necessary? Look what you did to my body which would have been otherwise catching more attention by default, making me rack less of my head and grey cells to do the same. But then on the bright side, now food turns me on often when my man is not there to do the same please rest the imagination horses-just the sight of food, is what I meant. You knew it could be a lonely world and I might need strength to bear it and weight to throw around.

Thank you also for introducing me to my later life arsenals-bras, although really did it have to be those terrible drab cotton ones with straps as wide as River Nile at that time? I now see it as a conspiracy to deter any possible onlookers from having gone any further from there. I mean Victoria’s Secret was a secret for both of us back then, but really Daisy was a sad substitute even by its mere name. And if Daisy was what you wore too I wonder at how my brother and I came about and how horny dad must have been to overlook screwing someone in a cotton ka kawach! It made me so relate to Bridget Jone’s Diary with all her garters and padded inner wear that could make a high man go dry at the sight of devastation-rescued, bandaged patient wriggling in action.

The conspiracy above makes me sniff for other possible loopholes, like I don’t know who made me believe almost till the age of fifteen that girls get pregnant if they take off their clothes before someone. Imagine my horror to even remove my duppatta before a full bloodied and bodied man, thinking if not a full on pregnancy, it might ensure at least the arrival of a tiny foetus in my womb.  And when I got my periods, the first thing you told me was “Now, you must be careful because NOW you can get pregnant if you are erring!” Christ, if only you had told me that before, I could have stripped in my washroom with more peace for all those twelve years or so, without bothering to check through the windows perpetually to make sure no one was peeping and risking me to early motherhood!

You did a great job of polishing us with impeccable English, introducing us to the language and words but mom really, you can’t gloat about it too much for your son in class 9^th came up to me and asked one fine evening “What is the meaning of the word fuck?” leaving me all reflective whether to give him a cock and bull story or a cock and pussy one!

Did we say thank you for getting married at almost 18 years of age and bringing me to the world even before you left your teens? Although it was a very bad example, for you made me get into child marriage at the age of 22, emotionally blackmailing me with the idea that at this age of yours, you had two children. And really bad sense of timing mom-for all the hottest items of mind-ilicious boys, are now in their twenties. Really, you could have waited at least a decade with all your horniness before bringing me to this world. Sigh!

I also wonder sometimes why I am so pouty within when it comes to fantasizing...wait a minute, I think it is because of your knack of pouting and dancing with a constraining of facial muscles, that I grew up watching. I should have actually watched what YOU were watching to understand that it was probably your way of expressing your oomph or hiding the fact that you were getting turned on. Anyways, I thought years of therapy would be needed for me to overcome that childhood trauma but then I developed new fetishes of my own and yours have relegated to the background. Plus the fact that the super gross non veg messages that you now forward me with the most explicit of Hindi terms, is taking the trauma to a whole new level and the idea of my education to a whole new dimension.

Enough said for now-we might want to save some skeletons for a sequel on public demand. Besides, I have to set up an example before my own daughter, so I don’t want to do any more damage than what my blog has already done. And really, before telling me to lose weight and apply anti-wrinkle creams or be nicer to my mother-in-law, will you please do something about the overacting and Now-Niruppa Roy-and-now-Helen act that perpetually follows all your drama in the house-just saying! And can you also please stop looking like my elder sister still, you are turning 52 next week for crying out loud :-)

Love you Mommy,

Your daughter who wishes she was half as good as you!