My mother

I sometimes smell that particularly flowery smell of sunshine- I can be in a sweaty compartment of the train, in a restaurant, in the canteen- and I feel like I've been thrown into another world. Time stops, my body is independent of my mind and I can do nothing but let fragments of a memory that I can barely remember take over.

There is a strange comfort in things that don't change. At 24 there is very little that hasn't changed and yet when I smell that mix of sunshine, starch and flowers I'm transported to a warm cocoon. I feel four again. I watch as my beautiful mother wears make up and combs her hair, watch as she stands in the middle of what looks like reams and reams of beautiful silk. I feel the cool breeze of the air cooler and the magic in the air as the puddle of silk on the floor rapidly disappears. Amma was always impatient dressing up, she would click her heals and swear at safety pins. I hardly blame her, there is a bewildering ritual in wearing grown up clothes. The click of heals, the touch of rouge, the right shade of lipstick and the precise fold of every pleat.

I watch as she carefully combs her hair and snaps at me for getting in her way or bringing food into the room- I'm a clumsy child and in my jaw dropping wonder I can't seem to balance my plate. Sometimes, and these were prize days, I would be called on to to be part of the enchanting ceremony. I would sit on the floor and yank on pleats so that Amma could tuck them in just right. She would then spray on that perfume- it was never the same perfume, I could tell by the bottles being of different colours- and yet it would be that same ambrosial bliss.

When I was a child I dreamed of growing up, of dressing to Naval balls just like my mother did, of being as pretty, as perfect. It's amusing how childhood dreams turn out. I don't yearn so much for any of that anymore, we live lives that are of mutual pride and yet so cosmically different; but sometimes, on that rare special evening I'll walk into my mothers room and pretend to watch TV as I take in the unchanged present and revel in the permanence of that smell.

I have "borrowed" a tidy sum of perfumes from Amma in the hope that I can conjure that moment on demand but it's never the same without my mother, her boxes of make up and those magical reams of silk.  

Televison

I was born in 1988 to a family in the Indian Navy. Colour TVs were just about making their way into Naval bases, cable networks still a long way off. Understandably, I remember little about the early years but my first lucid memory is of singing, “Washing powder Nirma, washing powder Nirma”.

My brother and I were ruled with military precision by my Drill Sergeant mother. Our lives were dictated by the clock. The routine is hard to forget after so many years. 


The truck would pick us up from school and drop us at home. We would spend an hour eating and then go out to play. 
The rule was to be home before 6 pm,when light fell and the street lamps were turned on. So focused would I be on my games of pretend, that I wouldn't notice the failing light until my brother, furious after looking for me for all of fifteen minutes, would find me to drag me home. We would then take a shower, pray and do our homework. Just as a meal ends with the very best part of it- desert, so would our day- we would all, my father, mother, bother and I sit down as a family to watch a few shows every night on Doordarshan.

For the summer we would travel to my grandfather’s house with Cable TV. My brother and I would sit glued to the TV all day long in awe of that Mecca of cartoons- Cartoon Network and yet, every evening we would watch a set of shows together as a family.Over the years the shows have changed from Buniyaad to The crystal Maze from the X-files to Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter. 

The cracks appeared as gradually as (and accompanying) adolescence. I was beginning to get as tall as my mother and she seemed less scary when I didn't have to crane my neck to look at her. I always had an answer to her questions and never found the time to wait for her answers to my, often rhetoric, questions. My father started sailing, my brother left to study and I no longer wanted to watch the same TV shows as my mother.


With inhuman patience, one that neither my father nor brother shared, my mother waited for this phase to pass. I had to leave home before this patience was rewarded. By this time we had probably all forgotten where we started from. 


With the years and distance coming between us, while each of us finds a way to our own lives, family TV time is an ill afforded luxury. It takes the funny voice of one of my nephews or nieces singing a television jingle I'm humming for me to realize we still remain connected in sharing a love for the illusive reality of the entertainment world.

I might be appalled by a lot that is passed off as entertainment, news or advertising today but my opinion of the media will always be coloured by its ability to bring people together and influence an emotion and action.
---
My brother in his wisdom gained from an extra 4 and a half years on this planet read this when it was first written and announced that I had confused fact with wishful thinking. I am of the opinion that he is more right than he realises but isn't that the beauty of memory- to allow a person to colour just a little bit outside the lines for a truthful representation of a perceived fact.