An Ode to a Mother

An Ode to a Mother
I saw her in the market. She was wearing a ghagra and an odhni covering her head. To her narrow pushcart were attached inflated toys. Toys in cheap plastic in offensively bright colours. She called out to me, but I walked on, ignoring her. Finishing our purchases and our weekly quota of paani-poori and chaat, we were walking back when I saw her again. She called out again and we made eye contact. She motioned to me to buy her stuff and had a beseeching look on her face. I looked away. You are trying to sell them to the wrong person, I thought. My daughter is grown up and doesn’t play with toys like these anymore. Moreover, they look far too cheap. I wondered why she was even trying to market them in a metro. Who would have advised her to come here and try her luck, I thought. Hard luck!!!

She stood there looking at me. I found myself walking towards her and asking if she would like to eat something. She nodded. ‘Vada pav’? I asked. She mumbled ‘roti’ and then added, “I want to sell my fare but haven’t been able to.” There was a hint of pain in her voice. I sensed pride, too.
“Doesn’t matter. My daughter is anyway too old for this,” I said.

I walked to the nearby shop and bought a packet of ‘pav’. She had followed me and was waiting outside. I handed over the packet to her. ‘Not this. I wanted aata. I can make rotis for my family.” she said. “Oh, okay. Anyway, keep this too,” I said, a tad sheepish at my not understanding her correctly, in the first instance. As I said this, the dirty polythene covering the front portion of the push cart lifted and a head peeped out. It was a girl of around nine or ten.

I went into the shop again and bought a one-kilo pack of aata. When I came back, the girl had opened the packet and was munching the pav. As I walked away, my thoughts were with the mother I had just met. A mother whose uppermost thoughts were about providing a meal for her child and probably a husband. When she asked for a packet of aata, she was thinking, not of the here and now, but about tiding over the next few days.

As we drove home, my mind could see her making rotis on the make-shift chulha and lovingly serving them to her girl. I hope she ate too.