Mom's Memories

On the 10th Death Anniversary of my mother Nirmala, I would like to write a blog to share some important phases / memories / events of her life. It has been a long time since I wrote a blog but will try to keep it interesting. 

1. Privileged Childhood 

Childhood Pic

Being the youngest girl child of 8 siblings, she was always treated as a child through out her life, her nick name was Chinna Ammayi (Little Girl). She could only managed to get to 7th standard, but she was able to read/write/speak Telugu fluently, and some broken Hindi as well.

She may not have born with silver spoon but was one of the few Privileged people in India, who travelled in flight, "Flying in air" was a rare stuff at that point of time. Irony is that me or my dad could never get her on to flight again.

Childhood Trip

2. Wedding Transition 

    a. On April 8th 1982, she had an important day of her life , and she got married to my father.

Wedding Pic

    

    b. My father had always been great support to her in all the situations.

    

    c. Life was not so easy for her to handle for the first few years of post wedding, managing family with a minimum financial resources was a challenging task.

    

    d. She shared so many instances of this not so good phase of life, but she made heart hard to handle them.

    

    e. There were section of people who didn't treat her well, which she carried that pain through out her life and it impacted her health.

    

    f. Transition from "Flying in air" before wedding to "Making heart hard" was a tough situation but god gave her the strength to go pass through it.

3. Family

    a. Immediate Family

        i. Happy Husband: 

One of the first trip of our family

            She was lucky to have a happy husband. They both coordinately took all the decisions in their life with minimum conflict of interests. My dad was busy at work at times and couldn't spend much time with us but she always understood him. They always celebrated the important events of life like Anniversaries / our birthdays by visiting temples / Restaurants. But they believed together that Son's education was their first priority of all.

            Few of the happiest moments in life:  

            a. My Dad being a Civil Engineer by himself, they were very determined to build their own Dream house.

            b. When we got first 4 Wheeler Maruti 800 car which is mostly first car of most of the Indians of their generation :) !!

During Construction of our First House

House Warming Ceremony

            She always prepared home cooked food, no matter what time my dad starts from home. My dad always fulfilled her wishes to visit many holy places like Kasi, Rameswaram, Puri, Tirupati... many other places and had good times over their 3 decades of togetherness.      

ii. Only Child: 

            She being one of the 8 siblings and my dad being one of the 8 siblings as well, my parents decided to have only One child, so that I don't have sibling competition...LOL !!

@ Kanyakumari, TamilNadu

            The only person anyone could ever ask you a question "You had your meal?" even before they ask "How are you?" is your mother. No matter what time of the day I call her, she asks the same first question.

            

@ Puri, Orissa

            

            She had been Diabetic since she was in early 30's and medicines at that time was not that great but she took care of her diet and controlled her self eating sweats / desserts. She managed well around 2 decades.

            Being the only child all my mom's attention was on me, I never wanted to leave my happy home and work at some other place, but there was a point where she asked if I would go to abroad for further studies and I accepted it before she could change her mind. 

            Most of the times my mom was very emotional and sensitive. But I also saw contrast shade of her, when ever situations were not going as expected, she never looked depressed, she always believed that things will get better and will be out the those bad phases soon. She has always been a great support to me.

Visited many places but found the best one.

    b. Sibling's Family members:

         She loves her brothers and elder sister a lot, she had great support from them through out her life. There were few instances where my dad got sick couple of times around 2 or 3 AM. First thing she did is to call her brothers, and they rushed to our home for help immediately to take to hospital. 

        

Mom with her siblings, nephew and nieces 

       

         I still remember her brothers having tea at my home and chat for long hours of time. I believe this is something rare these days as we all are busy with cell phones and life style.

        

        She had a very healthy relationship with her sibling's family members, all of them were very caring and took care of her a lot with their support. Some of my aunts and cousins never missed wishing on her birthday or anniversary. She was fortunate to have such a lovely family members.      

        

        These were just couple of the instances, and I may have to write a separate blog to tell about her relationship with her siblings and their families😊.

    

     c. Husband's Family members:

            My mom did her best to be the responsible eldest daughter in law. As my dad had 8 siblings, we have quite a big sweet cousins as well. 

            Being one of the youngest of all the siblings, she didn't had any younger sisters, but god had other plans for her. She had the best co-sisters (who are all younger to her) one can ever ask. They always have been very supportive and friendly with her in all aspects😊

My Dad's Brothers and family

4. Favorite Times

@Konark Temple

@Srisailam Temple

    a. Visiting Holy places - Most of the places we visited in our life were holy places. She never miss any opportunity to visit even a small temple.

    b. Playing chess / games - People say, you need to be smart to play chess 😎. She was very good at playing chess, I almost lost about 10's of games before I could win over her for the first time. She was my first and only chess guru. We also played many other games like Business (similar to Monopoly), Asta chamma..etc especially in the hot summer holidays to keep me engaged inside the home. 

    c. Cooking - I always enjoyed my mom's dishes, Aloo (Potato) and Bendi (Okra) fry are the best. Summer Mango pickles are the specials, her Daughter In-Law (my wife) still uses the same recipe for Mango pickle to prepare. Gulab jamun is the most made desert. 

    d. Talking to closed ones - Talking to people was one of her favorite things to do. She got along well with most of the people.

    e. Golden heart: Even though she didn't buy much gold as she expected, my Dad used to watch all kind of news in ETV channel for 1/2 hour, I was interested in sports update but my mom used to wait only for the gold rate for the day.

    f. Reading Rapidex to learn English (Telugu to English Translator) - She tried all her life to learn English but was partially successful with it.

    g. Watching Old movies - Akkineni Nageshwar Rao was her favorite actor and Kamal Hasan's "Akali Rajyam" (Hunger Country) was her all time favorite movie, and she never missed watching the movie on TV again and again. 

    h. Picture time: She just love being in pictures, we had a Negative Film Camera way long back in  1990's. It was not a common household thing at that time.

5. Perfect Wedding Date

Wedding time

    a. Sometimes I used to think my mom was too old fashioned, yes she is but her thinking was way ahead in some contexts, she regrets not being a working women, one of the advice she gave to my wife was to be a "Working Woman". 

    b. My mother was like every typical Indian mother who wants to choose a girl of her choice and I know she would get the best girl. So left her the choice 😄!!

    c. My parents got married on April 8th 1982, and we never knew that exactly after 30 years on the same day, I would be married on April 8th 2012 making it a Perfect Wedding Date. She had the best phase of her life and never saw her being so happy.

6. Final Destination

        She had a long due of going to one of most important trip of her life, Char Dham Yatra. She was just waiting for my wedding to finish and soon she left to visit these famous temples. After she returned from trip, Golden heart stopped beating, she passed away with heart attack and left vacuum (which can't be filled) in our lives on August 11th 2012 at the age of around 50. 

No matter how good or bad your childhood is, your parents tried their best to give you a better life. Take care of them when they need you. 

Hope you enjoyed knowing about my mother. Thanks for taking time to read it.