Main kabhi batlaata nahin...

I don't know how old I was when I first realized Her presence in my life, but I doubt I would have been more than three. Three days old. As I sit alone in this empty house, thinking, yawning and typing all at the same time, I cannot imagine exactly what great deed I did in my previous life, that I got a mother like Her in this one. Every single second of my existence reminds me of the fact that while I may really not be worthy of being Her son, God truly loves me because He gave me, as my mother, the most beautiful woman in the world. Beautiful in absolutely every sense.

Right from the way She holds the phone in Her right hand and puts the receiver to Her left ear, to the way She makes those weird triangular shaped chapatis, from the way She calls me up every time She hears something cinema-related because She knows how much I love movies, to the way She'll ask me to watch 'Halla Bol' because the film depicts the so-called shocking realities in the film industry, absolutely everything about Her makes me love Her more, and more and more...

She'll give the nearest biscuit packet She can find to the nearest kid She can find. If She can't find a biscuit packet, then She'll probably give the kid some gold jewelery. And if She cant find a kid, then She'll give the biscuit packet to Her 'Best Friend' :D. I remember this scene from the film Kaante, where Sanjay Dutt thumps a cop, and yells “Give!”. Mom probably dreamt that scene when She was a few months old, because thats all She really does in Her life. Give.

I can never forget the day when Mom gave me my first ever Famous Five , 'Five go to Demon's Rocks'. I was five years old then. (I have always secretly wondered, if the series was called, say, Terrific Three, would would She have given me the book when I was three?) If there had to be one single defining moment in my life, then that would have to be it. With that book, I was drawn into the world of make-believe, and so much so, that 'make-believe' made me believe in my dreams, my aspirations, and most of all, myself. So, in the truest sense of the statement, I am what I am because of Her.

I think I have fought and argued more with Her than with any other person in the world, but God knows, the more I love a person, the more I tend to fight and argue with them. She says I blame Her for anything bad in my life. Well, She has to take the blame for the fact that I argue so much, as I argue so much only because I can argue, I can argue only because I read so much, I read so much only because I loved the first book I read, and She was the one who handed my first book to me! :)

I could go on and on and on about Her, but if I decided to write absolutely everything about Mom, then I will probably be doing only that for the rest of my life. I can sum up absolutely everything by just saying, 'Tujhe sab hai pata, hai na Maa?'