MOTHER
I came home yesterday from my hostel for a tiny summer break, and after a long, long time, got the chance to take a lingering, calm look at my mother. I call her mother, but she is known by the names of Bharat, Hindustan and India by the onlookers. I celebrated my 20th birthday recently, and realised that my mother would celebrate her 79th birth year now after being delivered by the Caesarean section of Partition in 1947. And my oh my, the old hurdles of her life never seem to disappear, don’t they? The lines on her face clearly reflect the recent headlines we have been surrounded with, and these lines are so stubborn that no amount of niacin-amide and retinol serums in the form of changing political regimens, policies and judgements would be able hide them. If I skim through the latest Times of India copies, or just give a ChatGPT prompt right now to flash the top news headlines of India, there would be a fixed pattern that has not changed since my mother’s birth: A ...