The Power of Ma

  "To the world you are a mother... To us you are the world"

“Aaj mere paas buildings hai, property hai, bank balance hai, bungla hai, gaari hai… Kya hai tumhare paas?”. And there was a long silence, until Shashi Kapoor in his most under toned voice responds, “Mere paas MAA hai”.

A nation was stunned and that feeling still lingers amongst every movie buff.

If I had to rewind myself it was Indian cinema that had made the figurative speech of “MA” its most essential ingredient of success.

So, whether it was “Rakhee Gulzar” or the Late “Nirupa Roy”, they had instilled into us the essence of mother. Over the years this essence has slowly died down in the India’s “New Age” cinema. In fact, Ma has now been promoted to
Mom or Mummy until we entered 2019 and then we encountered scripts that were mother centric can not only be intriguing but thrilling too. Reeling out from the reel life and entering into the real life the question arises, are our mother’s equally so dramatic? In the cold wintry night of 1986, September 02nd, I started kicking fiercely quite successfully disturbing my mother’s sleep. And on the morning of the 03rd as the sun’s rays fell on St Mary’s Hospital, Kolkata (then Calcutta) I entered into this world with a bang! To me this lady was pretty a stranger because I was surrounded by nurses most of the time and was kept with many other female babies! But when my eyes first met her’s, I could feel that tear trickle from the corner of her eye. What we most famously market in all Indian movies as “Yeh toh khushi ke aasoon hai pagle”.

From pencil pokes to pulling my hair or from stretching my ears to making my cheeks go red or showing her grinning teeth or almost turning into one of Frankenstein’s characters, she has not let go any moment of expressing her love. And this would be at its epitome especially when I would sit with her for my studies. She would wear a pair of gigantic 1980’s style reading glasses and the pencil in her hand would not look less than a whip! No doubt, that I finally realized and was sure that she was a descendant of Adolf Hitler, until I bestowed her the title of “Mother Hitler” and till date she still holds that title.

But there was also another side to this character. It started with preparing me for fancy dresses or teaching me the piano or for that matter preparing me for elocutions and such contests which would go on till the wee hours of the morning and she would not only stay awake with me but also prepare me a warm cup of tea. Today, after thirty four years, countless days and nights and where time never seems to stop, I am still in awe of this character and for some reason I never was able to call her ‘Ma’, (although she still awaits that time when I would), instead I would call her by her nickname (hidden for privacy) and while that in my extended family was seen as a crime, I decided to continue to commit it!

While, I am most close to Baba, but the journey that I have travelled and if I had to thank one person, it would be the driver of this vehicle, it would be this strength, it would be this power - the world may know it by different identities and names but what lives on is a never dying essence and a resonance in its sound…. ‘MA’.

#happymothersday #ma #power #shakti