Living away from the parental home all these years, my mother’s recent visit to Delhi for a health check-up reminded me of how I couldn’t stop the tears when watching a scene from the film Mamma Mia years ago.
It has Donna (Meryl Streep) singing Slipping Through My Fingers to her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried). The mother and daughter in the film catch themselves looking at each other in the mirror and realise they will soon have to part ways. The mother realises her little daughter is all grown up and setting out on her own adult life-adventure, marriage, that is. The daughter is confident of her future and sure-footed despite all the butterflies in their combined stomachs. They connect with each other as their thoughts resonate. A feeling many mothers and daughters are familiar with at life’s many thresholds. That scene stays in my heart rent-free.
This epiphany struck me recently while I was selecting my mum’s outfit for an outing: I am just 27 and have been raising my mum, Kiran, 54, ever since I began to know the world better. It’s a role reversal, I am mothering my mother. While our relationship isn’t similar to that of Donna and Sophie’s or Lorelai and Rory’s from Gilmore Girls or Devi and Nalini from Never Have I Ever, there has always been a bond that flees definition, and blooms when it’s not spoken of.
My experience, I know, is not rare. But isn’t it uncommon to display love for your parents in Indian families? It’s rarely spoken of openly. My mum might never know that I wrote about it for the world to read. When she returned from the health checkup, I noticed that she was gasping for breath after climbing three floors and rushed to the kitchen to drink a glass of water. That threw me into a Bollywood-style flashback cycle. I recall that every time I would visit her during semester breaks, she would say, “kitni patli ho gayi ho” and proceed to stuff my plate with all the nutritious sabzis and treats at every meal. Then it would be back to college, and the snacks, the ungodly hours of eating when one felt like it, cocking a snook, and more at the circadian rhythm and the homilies of ghar ka khana etc.
That very night, I vividly remember her not eating till 11 pm until I yawped at her. She had been incessantly watching mukabang videos on YouTube and delaying dinner (yes, parents are now smartphone addicts too). I bellyached about it at work, the way my mum would rant about me skipping dinner and lecture me in front of my school friends. It is anything but pleasant to discipline one’s parents, people who you take for granted as being sorted. Now, they can’t stop scrolling the phone as the clock ticks closer to midnight, I tell you!
While I was at work during this visit, my mum was frequently on the phone, wanting to know my whereabouts. Her persistent calling reminded me of my childhood when I would pester her with calls—sometimes over ten times—whenever she wasn’t home with me. The very urgency I once expressed as a child has now become hers.
I can’t help but reflect on how the dynamics of our bond has shifted. Now, as I navigate adulthood, I find myself understanding that her calls are not just about wanting to know my whereabouts but also a knife to slice the distance. I took her to the weekly markets. Holding her hands tight, I gawked like an owl to ensure she was at ease on the bustling streets. She paused at every vendor, and it was I who ended up lecturing her against buying unnecessary things. At that moment, I was transported back to my childhood, recalling how she used to take me out shopping for Diwali, holding my hands as if afraid to lose me, gently saying no to my silly demands. The role had reversed but the reason for holding hands stayed.
One evening, we went out for a brisk walk to one of Delhi’s monuments. I remember brushing her hair before she pulled out her phone to take a selfie. After the walk in the park, we rested for a while. She rushed over, laid her head on my lap, and asked me to caress her hair. At that moment, I realised she was growing older, and her behaviour had started to mirror mine. For a split second, I saw a white screen in front of me, playing all my growing-up memories. On that screen, I relived the moment when my mum fixed my yellow suit as I climbed a tree, demanding a picture at one of our picnics.
Growing up, my mother was my sounding board, not a shrink, a bodyguard, or a guardian angel. She knew I could take care of myself in distant cities as well as on my ride back from school on a bicycle back then, but again parents will be parents. The silliest of my problems would bother her, keeping her up at night, and she would suggest ways out for me the next morning. If not that, she would try to fix it with a lame joke. I never thought about her mental health back then—perhaps because it wasn’t something we openly spoke of as we do now. Now when I see her worrying over the smallest of things, the ‘mother’ in me takes over.
When I was a teen, she never asked too much of me or pushed me to spend time with her. But now I wish to go back and hold on to every moment — the lazy summer afternoons spent talking about nothing, the long walks as the sun lazily went down the horizon or laughing about nothing at all.
I’m one of the lucky ones who have their mother as their friend, which is far more important than the ones we gave the title of BFFs. She always joked that I was the ‘coldest’ one among my siblings and one who would refuse to be her companion in her old age, but I have always been confident about our ‘relationship.’ Now she has returned to my hometown. Perhaps this is what she felt when I flew the coop and became a guest in my own home.