Its Christmas.

 

Its christmas.A week long vacation gives us a brief respite from mumbai's heat.Mumbai is always hot.Karan always jokes  that mumbai has three seasons i.e "Hot " , Hotter" and "Hottest".He always got me to chuckle on that one , now I don't know why .

I'm back in  Ahmedabad.Mom , who is Begum Nasreen or more properly Nasreen shaukat rahman is doing the laundry.She's been doing it the same way for the last seventeen years :Soak all whites and colours separately , overnight in hot sudsy water.Then , on sunday , take the clothes out of the buckets with a special wooden stick(mom was allergic to detergent) and then transfer the clothes into our rusty Videocon Semi-automatic along with the sudsy water. And I used to help out , with whatever I could do.

A powerful bonding ritual I've been doing for the last 14 years with mom , looking at mom , lost in one of her long silent episodes.Lost in herself.

I too would lose myself , in the middle of playing with soap bubbles....

 

I know I have to tell her that I'm pregnant.

She's talking about college and how lucky I am to be getting college education.

With a twinge of sadness she recounts her past , where women didn't normally pursue education after high school.In fact , high school education would be a privilege to many girls in those days.As a woman , in those days , one's role was limited to being a housewife and wasting money on a housewife's education was not the done thing.

My mom herself was from a village in Bihar , called Begasurai.Married off at sixteen to a city boy who owned a halwai (* sweets shop) in a big city called Ahmedabad had forced her to abandon her innocence and come in terms with the harsh realities of city life.

My mother a strong woman on her own , wanted me to make my mark in this world.She resented the fact that her english was broken .So she made me learn english .I was introduced to T.S.Eliot as well as Mills and Boons.(she wanted me to be exposed to everything , the good and also the generic crap)

English was my first love , but in college I chose to pursue Commerce.India , was booming.I wanted to ride the boom , but more importantly I wanted to be with Karan.We ended up going to the same college for MBA.

But the near future held no college , no graduation , no degree.

I was knocked out of the running by the application of a faulty condom theory.

"Mom" I blurt "I'm Pregnant "

To be continued