Mother's Day Musings

Mother's Day Musings

 I sat within easy reach of my phone all day long that day,  only to be deeply  disappointed ....my two boys had forgotten to call me.....how could they....was it even possible to forget Mother's Day in the US, where all around you that is all you see for several weeks in the run up to the second Sunday in May.....Mother's Day sales, sales, sales and more sales .....well they had forgotten and that was it.....swallow it and move on I told myself ....

My husband and I went out to dinner with friends, the hurt of not being remembered by my sons even on Mother's Day still uppermost in my mind. At 11.30 pm I went online after getting back home, and almost instantly there was the 'ping' of an an imcoming skype  call  ....

"Hi mom, Happy Mother's Day from both of us",  my older son typed....
"Hmmmmm......thanks.......you almost forgot didn't you......." I said, secretly elated but still a little grudging and hurt...."Mother's Day is almost over in India you know."
"No mom, we didn't forget, we just woke up" , he typed.  It was Sunday afternoon in the US and they had woken up after noon as usual! That much was entirely believable and made me feel a little better.

A week later Vikram my younger one came home for the summer.  We got talking and I ribbed him about how he and his brother would have been in deep trouble had they not managed to squeeze in their Mother's Day wishes to me just before the day was out. To which Vikram surprised me by saying "Mom when was Mother's Day?" "Don't you remember it was last Sunday? Don't you remember you and your brother wishing me late at night just before midnight?" Turns out his older brother had included him in his wishes to me as he himself  lay asleep,  blissfully unaware of this very important day! In his own defence Vikram said, "Come on Mum, don't you think it's stupid to remember to wish you happiness on just this one day of the year?" "Hmmmm....interesting thought" I said quite touched and left it at that...

Equally touching to my mind was my other son's lie about his younger sibling joining him in sending me Mother's Day wishes. It was just about the most beautiful white lie in the world ......he understood just how much it meant to me to be wished by both my kids on this day...that understanding and the desire to avoid causing me hurt was worth a million Mother's Day wishes...  I swore to myself then that I would never again be stupid enough to peg my kids' love and thoughtfulness to the ridiculous ritual of wishing me Happy Mother's Day!

And to think that our kids never asked to be born....why impose on them and expect them to express how thankful they are that we gave birth to them by wishing us and showering us with presents on Mother's Day?

 Instead, if we women shower each other with Mother's Day greetings (which we do), that is exactly as it should be....it seems the perfect thing to do to celebrate the great privilege we have of bearing children and of  enjoying the joys of  motherhood!

Sadly, to completely convince me about the unnecessariness of this day, it so happened that the very next day  after Mother's Day this year, I paid a heartbreaking, gut wrenching condolence visit to a couple who had lost a 23 year old son in a road accident just days before Mother's Day.  And then recently I received the completely shattering news that a colleague had suddenly and unexpectedly lost a 41 year old son to a massive stroke.

Both mothers never got to meet their sons as they lay dying. Both mothers will never receive Mother's Day calls and visits and presents from their sons ever again. Would these mothers care if their sons miraculously came back to life but never ever remembered to wish them on Mother's Day? We all know the answer to that one, don't we?


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Selling our warts for big bucks

This has been on my mind ever since that night after the Oscar Awards ceremony in 2009 when I was asked "So how do you feel about Slumdog's clean sweep at the Oscars?"

I was at an informal dinner at the home of the envoy of a developed western country. Fortunately  I was prepared for the question.  I was attending without my husband, and hence probably more candid than I normally am in diplomatic circles. I launched into my answer, "It is not an Indian movie, and the only thing I can think of to be proud about is that the concerned Indian authorities who give permission to foreigners to make such films about India reflect the openness of our system. Can you imagine a country such as our giant northern neighbour for instance, giving a free hand to any film maker to depict it in such poor light? I think not."

I must confess here that the import of  my response notwithstanding,  I have nothing but the highest respect  for a thoroughly  uncompromising stance in this matter. I remember being truly enraged at the scene in which a slum kid lets himself drop into a pile of human shit because he is locked into a makeshift toilet, and because that is the only way he can get out to get a glimpse of his Bollywood heartthrob. I can fairly confidently say that not a soul in India would willingly use this escape route to get a glimpse of God himself, let alone a Bollywood actor! As such, the scene was a misrepresentation and a falsehood and I would have loved to see Mr. Danny Boyle sued for it! Admittedly, if the Bollywood superstar was replaced by a few thousand dollars in the scene, the shitty escape route  would probably not be such a far fetched idea, though it would be no less damaging to a country's pride.

While this was just a frivolous opportunity  for Mr. Boyle to inject humour into his film, the collateral damage to India's image was plain unfunny. As  I remember it, this scene was not even that crucial to the film! So why was it in the film? The answer simply is that Mr. Boyle did not even think about what light it showed India in and how it would hurt Indians (why would he?), and worse, if he thought about it, he knew no one in India would object to it.

My calculated and evasive response to the question asked to me that night was precisely that - an embarrassed evasion and pretty weak damage control.  In the company of other Indians I would have said that it is stupid,  for want of a better word, and of course greedy as hell on the part of whoever makes money out of this, to allow our warts to become capital, off which  foreign film makers get fat and rich. To use a really bad analogy,  it is like poverty stricken parents lending their deformed child to the circus company to  make a  living!

This is is not to turn a blind eye to the shameful fact that millions of Indians defecate in public because they don't have decent public toilets, or any toilets at all for that matter. But the point is, do the Danny Boyles of this world help us to do something about it? Then why give them carte blanche on what they depict in a film made on Indian soil about Indian people, without retaining some form of control either before or after, or better still before and after the film is made?

With Kathryn Bigelow and others rushing to India to shoot their films, I don't honestly know how India can safeguard her interests, but it seems imperative that some sort of  control  be instituted, perhaps in the form of  conditions and clauses that will prevent the depiction of scenes that are objectionable to our sensibilities and sentiments.

If it were left to me, I would put our slums out of bounds for vultures posing as film makers. Maybe then the positive aspects of this country  would inspire some foreign films.  It is not a crazy idea, believe me. Other countries have been known to simply erect walls around unsightly neighbourhoods to keep the foreign media out during international events and such like. Frankly, the Bigelows and Boyles will do what they have to do by whatever means are available to them, so in the end this is not about them;  this is about us and about what we have to do and need to do, even if it means no one will want to film in India at all!