Scent Of A Woman

Did it bring Al Pacino to your minds? Naa?.for me it’s my mama’s smell ? I say smell because I remember as a child sniffing her saris and clothes for that very unique essence which is hers.  I can still feel it if I really want to.  A mother now, I wonder if I have managed to be unique to my children not only with the God given gifts or instinct but more with my gestures, love and teachings imparted.

Mama, Mamudi, Maman, a few of the million things I call my mommy by.  Even today when I go back home, she says that’s what she misses the most.  I have a habit of announcing my arrival rite from the first step on the staircase, so that I don’t have to wait outside the door much?.. Must sound kiddish to the mature adults, but if everybody is grown up what’s the fun?

My mother like me today and her mother before us, was a working woman.  Which meant that she was a SUPERMOM – trying to balance home, work and parental duties successfully, quite like the Sushmita Sen’s today, one may say.  It looked easier then, when I was at the other side of the looking glass.  Today, doing that myself, I realize how difficult it is to fulfill your child’s wish of a different dish even, vetoing something you have already made.

Honest confession, I never did fully appreciate my mum, her hard work or her painstaking efforts before.  Today, I see her in a different light, as a WOMAN.  I still remember lying in the hospital strapped to a fetal stress monitor, hours before my delivery, oceans away from home, I smelled the SCENT again and I awoke from my stupor, hoping to see my mama, sari clad sitting next to the bed as was the case always in childhood. She was not.  But what happened literally shook me up and I share the experience with almost everyone.

Six years in a country away from home, has not made me get used to being away.   I miss home, all the more now.  In October last year, my dad called me to say that mummy had met with an accident, she will be alright he said.  But the very fact that he called was reason enough to panic, as knowing my dad if it was minor he would not have given away anything.  I went home, without informing mom that I was coming, to find her in the Hospital, sedated with antibiotics and the works ? having lost her left heel due to a rickshaw mishap.  Her reaction when she saw me was (in the words of MASTER CARD) ? PRICELESS !!

I guess those are the moments that make your life, your living worthwhile, being there when you are most wanted but least expected.  Might I add here, that my little girl Reanne was more attached to her father since birth, but after my visit to my mama, she came to me.  Funnily this was bought to my attention by my husband, my friend.

So here goes, my tribute to the little fatherless girl who traveled from Mangalore on charity, at the tender age of 10, to work in people’s homes.  To go on to become a popular AUNT in her own Company, where she worked for a good 30 years.  She used to come home with peculiar gifts, like Jasmine Flowers, drumsticks and all sorts of vegetables, bought for her by those girls working with her.

Sometimes I dream of her falling, and I call home knowing fully well, with the telepathy that exists between us that something is wrong, and she is unwell or feeling low.  I thank God for the beautiful MOM he gave me.  I looked into the mirror yesterday and realized that my Mother before me in the prime of her youth must have been gorgeous?.as confirmed by my college and school mates always….Sorry they would say but your Mother looks more beautiful than you?.Hey guys, that makes me proud…I love you so much Maman?.

Happy Mother’s day to all Mamans!

Author: Tina Miranda- Kuwait