Like every body else’s mother, my mother too was an exceptional soul.
She had brought her six off springs (five daughters and a son) with equal affection, care and devotion within my father’s fixed monthly salary as a deft home maker.
I being the only son was never given special treatment and all six of us are graduates or post graduates and are well placed.
It was due to her exceptional communication skills and talented persona, that my five sisters were married in reputed families of the community without any trouble.
I remember her telling her daughters before marriage ‘that you are heading for your new home which the God has ordained for you for the rest of life and shower fragrance of love, affection and charm there in abundance’.
In those days when only communication with family was through letters, she had counselled them to write nothing negative but only good things about the family they were married.
Like a ‘Guru’ I had seen her teaching my sisters the art of knitting, stitching, cooking and singing.
She was the daughter of big ‘Zamindar’ (land owner) and magistrate who had holdings in Madhya Pradesh and Haryana and had grown up in a very care free atmosphere.
She was an excellent chess, carom, cards and badminton player and a par excellence cook of vegetarian and non- vegetarian delicacies.
Due to her eye ailment, she had never gone to school but had learnt Hindi reading and writing and after her marriage in 1945, my father who was a scholar of English and Persian, had taught her reading English and Urdu languages.
Marriage had totally transformed her life and she would wake up 5 in the morning for the daily chores and unbelievably till her death in 1985, she had fed us with the flour milled by herself on her ‘chaki’.
I saw her making cow dung cakes, coal balls and paper bags and knitting sweaters to supplement the family income.
She would tell us bed time stories from Ramayana, Mahabharata, Akbar-Birbal, Mulla-De- Pyaza, Sheikh Chilly and of Allaha Udal.
She was far ahead of her times and had taken lead in removing veil which was tradition in most of the families of that time and had become a LIC agent also for out door working during my father’s posting in Delhi.
She never stood in the way of my marrying a girl of my choice in 1977, from different community and had enthusiastically showered her love and affection in abundance on her only daughter in law.
She had lost heart after my father’s sudden death in 1983 and had soon followed him at an early age of 60 years conveying to us that she was departing fully contented as all her children are cosy in their respective homes .
Even after thirty years of her departure I remember her each day for her blessings while friends had called her a perfect blend of tradition and modernity.
She indeed truly lived up to her name Sushila.