Amma :)

Till 31st March, 1996, my mom was known as Sabita Satpathy.

The day after that, she also came to be known as mummy. A mummy to a dumb kid.

I do not remember a lot of details from my childhood, but yes, I have memorised all the stories that my mom has told me over the years.

People could not believe that my mother was pregnant with me. She never looked like she was carrying a baby inside. She was a thin, 45 kg weakling back then. Till her 8th month, she used to ride her scooter to her office.

My mom is amazing.

Just before a month of her due date, the gynaecologist revealed that I had developed some complications. The umbilical cord had got wrapped around my neck, and hence I wasn’t getting proper nutrition.

I was a disaster after birth. I had pneumonia like symptoms, was underweight and eerily quiet. The doctors were not sure about my life expectancy.

But my mom kept me close to her bosom, her body heat flowing through my skin. She spent around 3 hot, sultry months in a warm room so that I could recover.

Did I?

Yes, and I was still a mess. I made a huge fuss over my food. Mummy would always carry a big packet of Apple flavoured Cerelac in her bag.

When I started going to school, mummy had a hard time waking me up and getting ready.

Eating was always a problem. She would feed me while I would be half asleep.

I used to make a lot of mistakes during homework. Mummy sat through very patiently through all my wrong sums and misspelt words. I remember the last thing that she ever taught me was how to draw a C-60 Buckminster Fullerene.

Years went by, and I hit puberty. There were a lot of physical changes involved, and I was confused.

Till I saw blood.

I started crying. I was in 9th grade. Again, mom came to my rescue.

Well, for all those years, how did I reward her? By being rude and disrespectful. By being a headstrong teenager who had no control over her tongue.

Would you believe, that mom still used to wake me up, feed me, comb my hair and drop me at the bus stop during my graduation years as well?

Finally, in 2017, her little bird left the nest, and realised what a cruel world it is.

Her little bird finally realised the importance of curfews and home cooked food.

Today, I stay in Mumbai, and she lives in Bhubaneswar. We don’t meet frequently, but I know that I am always in front of her eyes, my voice ringing in her ears, and my fingers wrapped around her strong arms, arms that have grown stronger over the years.