The Silent Sacrifice

 I turned twelve, I turned sixteen and then finally twenty two. During all this time I found my mother standing with me and giving encouragement for everything I wanted to do.. I have even found her struggling with my bad mood swings and doing every single possible thing to clear my paths for achievements. Then the day came when I returned home with a trophy having sparkling diamond on its head and found my mother reading her phone’s screen mouthing words which she listens carefully. 

Give -gave-given

Do -did-done

Lose-lost-lost

She seems lost yet she pauses the video, looks up and smiles and tells me “I am proud of you, my child.” and I listen as her voice glides gracefully in her mother tongue. She asks me curiously how to say this in English, because at the age of forty six my mother's English is the static on an old radio -mid song, mid conversations. It is the tune, she is always humming but can never remember the lyrics of. My mother's English is like a wedding song, heard only on special occasions. 

My mother got married at twenty-three when she wrote her final exams wearing red bangles that slowed her down. She tells me she already found her results, before they were already announced. On some days my mother calls up only for me to translate Whatsapp forwards or to translate the arguments I recently have with my father on phone calls. In family groups, my mother serves क, ख, ग to the tables feasting on ABCs. She sees these alphabets from vapor suffocating her long after everyone leaves. 

She says if she could do it again she’d learn English so in a room full of people her voice would be heard. Over the chitter-chatter and the clutter-clatter she’d know her voice mattered. And when her children whispered she’d understand their code words. So if she could do it all again she would go back to college to study more before marriage.

I ask her maa, why do you have to do it all over again, when you can just begin now. You can still go to college, signup for spoken English classes. You can still have all of this.

She smiled, mouths a new word- 

SACRIFICE 

She spoke to me with tears in her eyes.

Your father needs tea at 7 am every morning,

Your grandparents needs me 24*7 every week,

I have give-gave-given everything for this family.

I have do-did-done everything that is my duty.

and I lose-lost-lost my chance.

Sacrifice

Isn’t this funny how you do something all your life not knowing where is the worth of it.

my mother calls this conversation a lost cause-

calls it her English

calls her education

calls her marriage

and I don't know the word sorry in our mother tongue. I only have poems. I write in a language and I believe she hates it now yet somehow, she still manages to be proud of me.

 Dear Maa, 

I love you and I am sorry for not being nicer and more respectful when you need me the most. I admire you for bearing with all my stupidity and roughness. Now it's time for me to not let you fight your battles all alone. to not let you surrender for anything less. I assure you that I will achieve everything for which you have lost everything. You inspired me to be a super woman like you..

Don't worry maa, your daughter is now a soldier.