Amma

A team of machine tool experts are visiting a colleague’s house for tea. The sisters of the colleague have returned just then from a short tour of Maharashtra. They are unpacking their shopping done on the tour and one item – a brass pestle and mortar - catches the attention of one of the visiting experts. And he casually wonders, “How has this been made”? The hostess, the colleague’s mother, is sitting near the questioner. She is about seventy, with neatly groomed grey hair tied into a bun, dressed in a traditional Indian cotton saree, wearing a big vermillion Kunkum on her forehead. She asks for the mortar, inspects quickly and declares nonchalantly, “This has been cast and then turned in a lathe”.

The experts, are all wide eyed and IMPRESSED, to say the least! That was some twenty-five years ago.

The last daughter of an engineer who had obtained his diploma in engineering more than a century ago from VJTI, Bombay, she had many brothers who were engineers. She had a keen interest in all things technical.

She was my mother, who passed away on 26^th of this month.

I gifted her a screw driver set for her seventieth birthday and my colleagues, whom I told - for effect, were aghast but she was overjoyed – she could now periodically overhaul her sewing machine with proper tools! She would listen to the sound the machine made and knew when it was time for an overhaul.

When I was still very young, she taught me how to replace a blown fuse. I felt all thumbs but she was patient and let me complete it. That stood me in good stead all my life.

After she turned eighty she got an iPad and learnt to e-mail, surf the net for information, got onto Facebook and followed the online activities of her children and grandchildren and rejoiced. She was not easily fazed by technology around her.

I have mentioned just one face of a multi-faceted personality.

Above all that she was my mother. My three sisters and I and miss her sorely!