REBIRTH

They say - with the child, a mother is born. But with a child within, every relationship that you have lived for all your life gets a rebirth. Every person around you, goes through a newly installed scanning device in your mind. You instinctively start making a lakshman rekha (protection boundary) around your unborn child and put people around, depending on the points they score in your screening test. Leave alone the living, you even scan the dead. Believing in the philosophy of rebirth, you just want to be sure which ancestor of yours is worthy of contributing to your child.

But the relationship that goes through most metamorphosis is the one with your own mother. Actually now it is that I realise that we were hardly in that roleplay. She definitely started her journey as a mother to me but soon she became the teacher, taking my homework and looking after my academics. At the arrival of my teenage, she changed herself into a friend, not the one I could do all the dirty talks with but definitely the one who knew my dirty thoughts well in advance and also the way to hold me to the right path and keep confiding in her, in the most non-offensive way.

The vigilance of a detective she had on my college life, not by following me around but talking me into confessing every little mischief and crush straight to her. Never did she put a ban on them to make a rebel out of me. And soon she turned into my enemy, wanting me to get on my feet not just financially but also socially. Every opportunity she got to make me understand the importance of companionship and family and caring for it, was never a miss.
All this and trust me, by the time I got married I hardly was disheartened to leave her. To an extent, even relieved of not having her around often. But not too late, I realised that a mother with all her different roles cannot be replaced and should not be taken for granted. "Maa a maa, bija baddha vagla na vaa"- a Gujarati saying for "a mother is above all, rest all are like forest air" and "swami teene jagacha, Aai vina bhikari"- a Marathi saying for "the lord of the universe is also a beggar without a mother"; these two sayings she repeated to me for her mother, now go around in my mind whenever I think of her.

Soon she disguised into an agony aunt, advising me through every step of my married life. She never judged me on what course my life took on professional or personal front but always rejoiced in every right step I took in any direction.
And now when I stand on the threshold where I am stepping out of her shadow, heading to become one myself; I look back on all the valuable lessons I learned from her, all her genius parenting hacks on making me eat healthy, be truthful and humble, setting and achieving goals, confiding in her, trusting in her and even fearing her.

No doubt, she is the one scoring highest in my screening test and every now and then I keep wondering if I can match up to her motherhood skills. I wonder, the way I find the edge of her saree the coziest pillow, her hand the most taste enhancing spoon, her lap the safest escape, her voice the most soothing and yet most reviving sound and her presence the essence of my being on the earth; I would be able to create such world for my child.

P.S. she has not yet given up on the roleplays, trying to become my daughter before I actually become a mother.