Memories of My Mother

 Today is my mother’s memorial day, and I remember my earliest memory of her from when I was about 2½ years old.

I suddenly woke up and found myself in the care of my elder cousin sister. I realized there was nobody at home, and my mother was not there. I searched for her, and later, I think I cried myself to sleep.

A few hours later, or maybe even the next day, my sister told me, “Your mom has come back.” My mother came home with my younger brother. That became my earliest memory of her. I ran toward her, hugged her legs, and asked, “Why did you leave me?”

There is a lot that comes to my mind when I think about my mother. So many memories. I don’t know if I can express all of them exactly in words. It has been 16 years since she passed away.

Only a few people know today that my mother is no longer alive. Mostly, only my close circle knows. But people who knew both me and my mother well always say, “You are just like your mother.”

Even now, her elder sister, many of my relatives, people in my street, her friends, and so many others still miss her because she was a very good listener and a very positive person. She always used to say, “If you cannot be helpful to others, at least don’t be a disturbance.”

She truly lived by those words.

I also remember one incident from my childhood. My mother gave me a one-rupee coin, and at that age, the coin almost covered my entire palm because I was such a small boy.

She asked me to give it to a homeless person. I remember asking her, “Why should we give money to them?”

She told me, “Always help people who have nothing, as much as possible. Even if it is just a small amount like one rupee, you should still help if you can.”

I still remember those words. Even though it was such a small moment, it taught me something very important about kindness and compassion.

I still remember that when I was a child, she once explained to me how she prayed. She said, “Whatever difficulties or suffering are meant to happen to my family, let them happen to me instead. Nothing should happen to my family.”

That was the way she used to pray. She was willing to bear everything herself if it meant protecting the people she loved.

Sometimes, when I think about it now, it feels painful because, in a way, her prayer became real. That is how life feels to me today.

I think during my childhood, maybe around 5th or 6th standard, I used to love watching channels like National Geographic and Discovery Channel. I was especially interested in hunting-related programs, like a cheetah hunting a deer or a snake hunting a rat.

Whenever I watched those kinds of shows, my mother would come into the room where the TV was on and ask me, “Why are you watching these disgusting things?” That is what she used to say.

She also used to wonder, “Why did God create so many living beings only for one to eat another?”

I still remember replying to her, “I don’t know whether God created it or not, but this is evolution. If the deer does not run fast enough, the cheetah will catch it. In that way, both of them keep becoming faster.”

At the same time, she was also a very straightforward person. If she didn’t like something, she would say it directly to your face. And usually, she would be right. You couldn’t easily say she was wrong because she had that much clarity and accuracy when she felt something was not right.

She also used to say, “Even if someone is your enemy, if they are not disturbing you, don’t disturb them. But even if someone is your friend, if they disturb or hurt you, stand your ground and fight back.”

That was the kind of person she was — kind and positive, but also strong, honest, and fearless.

My father is very talented, and I often post about him on his birthdays. But my mother was someone truly special. In many ways, I feel she was ten times more intelligent than my father.

She had the ability to forgive people, even those who hurt her directly. Still, she continued to help them and do what she believed was right. At the same time, even though she forgave them, she would never give them the same place in her life again. That is one of the reasons I respect my mother so deeply. I admire both her kindness and her courage.

When I was studying in 5th standard, around 10 years old, I used to fail many tests. In my matriculation school, we had seven subjects, and I would fail in six of them. The only subject I used to pass was Mathematics.

Not only would I pass, but I would score 100 out of 100. At that time, nobody else used to get full marks like that, and my Mathematics paper was even used as a model paper. In my school, a model paper meant that teachers would use that paper as the standard to correct the other answer sheets because it was considered nearly perfect.

Because of this strange combination, I became one of the most notorious boys in the school. Even my friends used to tell me, “The subjects that are easy for us are difficult for you, and the one subject that is difficult for us is very easy for you.”

My teachers told my mother, “He is a very talented boy, but he is also very adamant. He can study all the subjects, but he only studies the subjects he likes.”

But the truth was that, at that time, I genuinely did not understand the other subjects. Mathematics was the only subject that made sense to me.

One day, my mother told me, “In school and academics, teachers are speaking badly about you. Everybody should say good things about you, right? That is what I expect, and that is what makes me proud.”

I still remember those words.

I think around 8th standard, I slowly became more balanced in my studies. I started scoring around 60 or 70 marks out of 100 in all subjects and became more balanced academically, but in Mathematics, I still scored above 90.

At that time, around 9th or 10th standard — and even before that, maybe from 5th standard itself — I did not like going to school. I used to skip classes often. Not only was I unprepared for my subjects, but I also bunked school many times.

My family would leave me at school, but somehow I would escape without the watchman noticing me. I would walk a couple of kilometers back home or spend time hiding and playing video games at a computer center. Sometimes, I would hide somewhere for the whole day, and nobody could find me until much later.

One day, after they found out again, they were forcing me to go to school. At that moment, I was thinking to myself, “Even if I become a school dropout, I can just take over my father’s ice factory.”

The very next second, my mother looked at me and said, “Don’t think you can simply take over the ice factory. You are not even 10% as talented as your father. You cannot run that business even for one day. Your father is a very talented person.”

At that time, I was around 15 or 16 years old. I still remember that incident clearly — not just the words, but even the exact place where it happened.

I also saw many moments between my parents. Like every husband and wife, they had small arguments sometimes, but I always felt that my mother was deeply and truly in love with my father. Honestly, I have never seen that kind of genuine love in any other couple — not among relatives, friends, or anyone else, even until today.

One thing I clearly remember is that she never stayed even one full day at her parents’ house, which was also her elder sister’s house. For example, sometimes she would prepare breakfast or lunch at home, and then we would all go to her sister’s house. But around lunchtime, she would suddenly become worried and say, “I don’t know whether your father has eaten properly or not.”

I would jokingly tell her, “You already cooked the food, right? He will take care of himself and eat. We are here — take care of us first!”

These memories still feel so fresh to me, as if they happened yesterday, even though so many years have passed.

There is still so much more I could share about her, and that itself shows the kind of person she was. But I think this is enough for today.

Thank you for listening to me talk about my mother.