My mother complained, partly in jest, that I didn’t write about her or have her pictures in my book. I tried telling her that the book was not about her. She wasn’t convinced. I told her that a chapter wouldn’t suffice in doing justice to her. She dismissed it.

She completes 78 years this December 1st. This is a small attempt to introduce her to you.

She was 16 when she married, had 4 children by the time she was 24, widowed at 39, took up employment thereafter to make ends meet. She became a grandmother for the first time when she was just 43. She quit her job, crippled by rheumatoid arthritis, before she turned 50 and has since lived with me, now 30 years.

I remember her as being a passionate and tempestuous woman when young, moderated in the years that followed by the burdens of caregiving – for close to seven years when my father took ill and later by the responsibility of providing for the household. She aged rapidly under the weight of seeing to her four children.

She was a woman of many talents. Musically inclined, she could sing effortlessly, pitch perfect, and more importantly, was pleasing to the ear. She could play the violin with great ease. She was an accomplished Bharatanatyam dancer as well. Now, years later, she rues the fact that her voice is no longer cultured, the violin unplayable because of bent, twisted and inflexible fingers, and dance a long-forsaken gift, all due to arthritis.

She doesn’t appear to have been academically inclined, but she cultivated a reading habit that for many years was invaluable. She devoured novels and I suspect they were a regular escape from the humdrum life as a housewife where her artistic talents didn’t find much encouragement or opportunity.

In all the decades she has been with me, she has been an anchor and a friend, to Chandrika and me. She was never the stereotypical ‘mother-in-law’ who was jealous, petty, possessive, or one who sowed divisions and made unreasonable demands. The only sources of tension in the house with Chandrika that I recall were around the use of plastic and agarbattis, both of which Chandrika disliked and my mother believed to be indispensable. The one other source of disagreement, mostly muted, was about organic foods – Chandrika thought and bought ‘health’ and mother viewed ‘organic’ as an expensive con.

My mother’s health is a long story. She has innumerable ailments and is the pharma industry’s delight. She consumes a number of drugs each day and holds a reserve, just in case…. There are few ailments for which she doesn’t have a ready drug recommendation, and as grandmas of the past did, she has a suggestion or two if you care for a home remedy. They come with personal guarantees – she has suffered them all and cured them too.

Her ailments have kept her life somewhat simple. For many years now, she has been unable to travel. So, she is content to see far flung places across the globe on the National Geographic channel. Her calendar is mostly populated with visits to doctors. Thursdays are reserved for visits to a Sai Baba site. She barely manages to keep awake much of the day and doctors tell her to count her blessings for this reason! Must be all the drugs.

Simple pleasures sustain her: every once in a while, she pulls out all her sarees, airs them and puts them back. It is painstaking work and good exercise too. We also get to see her in all the sarees she has, by rotation. That is over two hundred sarees. She spends an hour in her pooja room on the days she can and lavishes her gods with abundant flowers, now that her penny-pinching days are behind her. She miraculously pulls out gifts (mostly sarees and bangles) for people who visit, be it family, friends, ex-cooks, ex-maids, ex-nannies, ex-nurses, … and takes great care to choose and joy in offering. She counts the small change and gives away big and there is no contradiction in her mind. Most of all, she is light-hearted and celebratory when an assembly of her children and grandchildren (and lately the great-grandchildren too) come visiting.

It is fascinating to watch her navigate Facebook and WhatsApp and find her close to midnight staring with glazed eyes at the small smartphone screen. She readily types ‘Amen’ because someone asks, and shares others’ one-liners and stories freely and has acquired a reputation for smart and funny shares amongst her friends. As for myself, to be honest, I unfollowed her months ago.

She worries that she is becoming forgetful. I worry that she is becoming increasingly dependent. Between us, we have much to say but very little gets across. She asks me sometimes: What do you think of me? How does one say that she is the best of all that one could ask for, without sounding trite? Every so often, we let sparks fly… when her religiosity, her godmen, her tales of miracles, her abounding love for her gods and goddesses and her yearning for Grace encounters my nihilism, when her infectious and perennial anxieties meet my cultivated nonchalance, when her persistent (and repetitive) questions meet my utterly transparent ignorance, and when her desire to surrender completely is not matched by evidence that I am taking charge…

As she completes 78 years, Meghna and I count our blessings and wish her a wonderful day, this December 1, 2019. We will probably indulge her with her favourite ice-cream. She will, of course, adjust her insulin shots and see that nothing dampens her indulgence.

This article originally appeared on my Facebook page.