The musings of AIM or Adolescent Infected Mothers

                       The musings of an AIM OR Adolescent Infected Mother

Let me pathetically state  that it is almost 2 years since I entered into a wedlock with this blog, my nocturnal trysts had undoubtedly conceived many a times but did not have a fruitful ( this  word is dear to me as it has taken  its toll in my life, which you will understand later) life, since many a times it ended  in a pathetic premature delivery, still born, or had to undergo an abortion due to a particular state in my life which my teachers had discovered in my school days and which closely resonates with my name. Yes you guessed it right.. Laziness… the teachers voice had  echoed so much  in my ears that their advises and scolding on being 'lazy lazin’ fell on deaf ears.

Then this sudden urge to write, was not something that came dashing out of the blue..but it has been eating my sleep and soul away, after discovering, from my frantic search into all forms of historical data, that no form of records or manuscripts has been maintained or written in any visible form of the plight of the mothers with their boys in teens except for Kamala Das who intensely feels the rejection of her son when he emerges in’ harsh adult glory’ ‘like a pupae from its cocoon ‘’. So I hereby take it on my shoulders to record in history,   the fix in which new generations mothers land, thus acting as a ready reference to the mothers yet to face this situation, a relief to the ones, who at this moment are under going this torture and   a reminder to those who have already passed this stage and still survived.

Born in a family whose sole male member was my father, even my slightest pranks were considered intolerable. Poor me! I was desperately struggling, with the help of equally gifted friends, to fill up the void created by my mom’s unborn son, whose absence was lamented and sighed over,  by struggling desperately with mischief’s’ which would never have crossed the minds of the weaker sex!!! So the birth of my son, the first male of the family was welcomed with joyful tears by family members and his equally tearful parents, though for a different reason. They were half paralyzed to see the heavy hospital bill shoved under their noses by the all-smiling-sweet-angel in white.. really a boy was costly.. er.. sorry valuable.

I saw him grow up under watchful eyes, marveling at the way he would recite his rhymes, built his blocks, name cars, and do what not, and like any new parents whose secret belief that this exhibition from the tots was an indication of the future genius that they would be, something that would fade into oblivion as these cute ones slowly grow up, I too believed.. here was a child prodigy on its way.  Yes, he would  do all these wonders even before play-school, for that is the place where you keep the poor ones marinated ready to be sautéed, by variety of cooks, each year monotonously, till they are tempered, tampered, softened and well done by the end of the next ten years.

I still recall his artistic skills in his KG classes when he decorated the rooms  meticulously by sticking my unused  sanitary pads on the walls, his concentration when he would not butt from the room even to answer natures calls and would do it behind the settee, as he was busy glued to the TV  with  ‘pokemons’   ‘eboling’. The missing pages in his notebooks would transform into rockets or paper balls which flew helter skelter without any fuels, save the heat gushing out from my ears. (this portion

alone may take pages and pages.. so let me sum it up with the easiest word  that we use to show the reader that there is more to it  but at the moment this is it…  ETC!!!!.). I wondered what his teachers expected of me when I was politely invited to their institutions and those phalanxes swarmed around me like buzzing bees with complaints that he would not sit still in the class.   

Here I share my sentiments with him as I personally have felt the discomfort at sitting on the hard benches, a victim  doomed  by fate, without any form of entertainment from (imagine!!!!) morn to eve, except for the gimmicks of the teachers in front of me, and had vehemently tried to save my fellow beings from the afore said torture, by pulling their hair, nudging them, giving them a friendly thrust and during occasional attacks of enlightenment, pinning notices on their back amounting to   ‘punch me’ or ‘I am a donkey,’ or at times inserting pencils in their hairs,  thereby catching the attention of the teachers who would shout’ LAZIN LISTEN’ with a pronounced stress on the Z in the former and SSsss in the latter, defying all rules of linguistics, both the words uttered with the rising intonation which even the old deconstruction father  Derrida   or the new ELT master Jeramy Harmer would not have pardoned..the poor ones under situations beyond their control, would painstakingly coax me to  step out of the class, wherein I would happily stride out victoriously, aware of the jealous eyes’ following my exit, where I would remain guarding the corridors, enjoying the fresh and free air, watching the clouds put on  new attires,  the rains play hide and seek on the grounds, or the birds not sowing not reaping, yet contented, all these teaching me more than what I would have learnt in the 4 walled classrooms. The detention after class hours also helped a lot as it was during such occasions of very intimate moments   that  I made many of my amazing discoveries like the following

1. The nuns really wore bras.

2. The headmistress ate toffees.

3. The physics teacher had a missing tooth in front carefully camouflaged which explained her special ability of saying F. Ffffriction, Fffforce, Fffulcrum….

4. There was a whole rat family with 6 kids housed in the library shelf and could be used as props to liven up the history classes, something I hated…

5. Etc.

A peep into the history would reveal that all wonderful discoveries and ideas have sprung up under such odd and special circumstances.. Yea I could understand what my son was going through.. Especially as a studious student  of psychology, I blame only the teachers who complained about his over enthusiasm and wondered what they were doing during their psychology lectures.. I even had a good mind to give them a session or two..that too free of cost!!!

One would wonder why his father was not mentioned all this time, yes he was there, throughout this period like one of Adoor Gopalakrisnan’s characters with just emotional displays that could not have been caught even by the most microscopic cameras, never to come to the foreground, whereas my son and I were busy indulging in all forms of art forms from the everyday kin-esthetics  to the most classics of performing arts.. viz. the 

KATHAKALI

Kathakali with its kathi, kari, thadi.. late into the nights. We, the mother and son duo, would just slump into our beds, exhausted and spent out after such vibrant performances, which would be initiated by  one of his notebooks or his missing item in the pencil box, mine already occupied by my snoring hubby with his blissful peace and serenity that would shame the saints who have attained their salvation.

Yet, I turn to him for guidance, occasionally, and I would be met with his childhood days, not failing to give me the exact date and time, for being an ardent student of history, he knew the importance of dates, which has  left me staring at him in awe and wonder at his sharp memory,  at the same time a bit flummoxed as to why he could never remember the dates  of our anniversary and my birthday…perhaps its only humanly  to forget the tragedies in one’s life!!!

Yes.. he would, with substantial evidence of dates give me anecdotes of how he would climb on to the coconut tree and when the tender coconuts were almost within reach, his hands would give away and thus, would slide down  with a speed that would have shamed the costliest sports car. This was done with a particular part of the body rarely used by human beings… the thighs, gripping on  to the coconut tree , the rings barely a halting points in his journey down, thus proving Newton  … later when the skin in his thighs had  had a victorious come back, he would go off to the jack-fruit  branches .. balancing himself as masterly as an acrobat, devouring jack fruits in one sitting. His expertise does not come to an end at this point. He was indeed blessed with a particularly persistent way of finding pocket money  as per  the seasons. When it was time for the cashew nuts to be harvested he would quietly pilfer them from where they were left to dry in the sun. When it was off season there were always the gratified hens ready to extend a helping hand to him. The fecund ones would proudly chuckle after laying eggs, announcing their hard work wherein his mother would pick them to be added to her proud collection of eggs…these eggs and the cashews would then find its place to the local vendors for half its original prize through my husband- child, who would pride himself of being a budding business man. 

At times, things would take a nasty turn and not wanting to be caught red-handed, he would dig up the earth and bury the cashews, planning to retrieve it when the coast was clear, but would end up forgetting the exact location of the thondi  (stolen property)and weeks later the household would wake up to see new sprouts of cashews peeping out from the wet earth, proclaiming their existence in unison. 

                                                                                                   

There were also times when the eggs safely deposited in  the trouser pockets,on their way to  the local vendor, would crash or burst, probably heartbroken of being a party to this heinous  crime  and  thus reveal the whole stinking  affair.  There were also times when he would stealthily lower himself into the darkness of the traditional pathayam(a traditional piece of furniture which had the dual duty of serving as a large storage space and a high heeled cot)

PATHAYAM

 and finish of the whole bunch of bananas left to ripen in the darkness… (and leave only the middle stump and the skin for the persons who had deposited it there and  had dreamed of the golden colored bananas. Realization would   then dawn on them about the absurdity of human dreams, and futility of hard work!!!). The great orator   has done his best to enlighten me on the basic fact that it was like monkeys to trees that boys to mischief were.

Any complaints about my son to his father was met with such anecdotes complete with dates, which soon would leave me wondering at the idiocy of   this conversation which again would always end with the metaphorical coconut, the jackfruit (sometimes there is even a digression towards the type.. the long hard ones or the soft small ones), banana, hens,  etc. These 'fruitful' anecdotes contributed little to solving my problems.. but always consoled me, at  the thought  of my luck, as these trees were not found anywhere  near the vicinity and hens were just  lifeless beings that came in different forms and names on  to the dining table and the poor ones were not in a capacity to produce eggs.   

Now, let me come back to our problem of the adolescent infected  mother.. lets call it AIM for the time being, I am sure that the Medical nomenclature society would soon honor me for coining  this sweet name, and a search into its etymology will have my name tagged to it. Years rolled by. I am at a loss to recollect the exact  date as to when this disease infected me,  for I had  expected a complete rest after so many hard years of child rearing,  when things took a nasty  turn which left me bewildered and confused, as I found myself at the receiving end. To begin with, it was those sports pages and Justin Beiber which ditched me.. pardonable!!! Then came his hair which proclaimed its freedom to manhood. The soft silky hair which I had oiled and combed meticulously and which was always under my control, suddenly took  a rough and bold attire, turning upright, defying gravity that poor Newton, whom his father had so painfully proved right, would have turned in his grave. 

His trousers slowly slopped down from his hips and were always in the verge of a downfall, thus arousing the curiosity of the onlooker as to what held it there? The music that we had enjoyed was loud blares from the stereo, for which we were chided. I had had secretly taken an oath that I would never be like my 'Old' generation and would allow my kids to enjoy music even if it was at cost of my neighbors’ headache!!! Years have proved this liberal- broad- minded mother wrong, when this kid, an ardent music lover, is seen, NOT heard , with a deafening silence of music, connected to wires extending from his  ears to his pockets, isolated and  detached, like a hermit who has had his share of worldly pleasures and would now like to renounce it , to retire into his own blissful world.(being a hermit is not something difficult these days.There is always someone to feed you,you get the respect you do not deserve and at anytime your come back home is welcomed!!!) Those protruding wires mock at my ignorance of his taste of music, but I am equally contented  and thankful for  I could have turned into a yo yo ball  and bounced and bounced, if I had to listen to this guy called yo yo Honey…..  and all this time  as a working mother infected with AIM, I was desperately trying to  beat the clock that even the concept of sitting still was too terrifying to contemplate.. And here was this relaxed hermit with a feeling that he had all the time in this world.

To add to this woe was my knowledge of adolescent psychology, something I was forced to study for my teacher graduation and even in detailed at the post graduation, which made matters worse as I had to sit and make a ‘safe’ plan for approaching him without hurting his sentiments and individuality. During such moment I really wished I was illiterate and ignorant in this field, for I would just go and shout it down and pounce at him as our parents had done to us, and we would then 'live happily thereafter!'

My husband by now has gone back down history, from Adoor to the silent motion films with sub titles, when his stories of coconuts and jack fruits are met with my cold and threatening stares!!! The love-filled-lunch boxes are deliberately forgotten. The water bottles have completely disappeared! Jeans are long lasting with its tear and holes. Yet he is better off than the guys I teach!!! Thank God, there are no pricked ears and noses, no necks adorned with skulls dangling from steel chains, no rainbow colored hairs, no wrist bands or T- shorts with the F word. The serendipity of chance acquaintances have now given way to FB friends. I lecture him on the Fake relationship in the virtual world, and call it a fakebook, which I feel falls on deaf ears till I am proved wrong when he himself removes me from his friends’ list, reminding me that our relationship was too dear to him and he does not want it to be a 'fake’ one. I am at loss for words and I struggle to put on the correct expression, which results in something like I had a maxilo facial surgery, a cross between eating sour grapes and being out of breath at the same time. I have to’ look’ up at him, now that that he is taller than me and from the corners of my eyes I can  see the devilish glee of his father, filled with vengeance at my helplessness.

The portion between his nose and upper lips are now sprinkled with weak soft hair sprouts which may thicken in the years to come. I amazingly watch him, grow up and declare his manhood and at the same time feel frightened over what future has in store for him. Many a times has he pointed his fingers at me for being too prying and interfering. He might have been fed up of his new –gen mother who has ‘restricted’ him unlike other mothers, from hanging out with friends, and discussing every penny that has crossed his hands. He calls me, jokingly, a ‘feminist’ when I insist he spreads his bed and   tidies his room, for which I cannot blame him as he has grown up in a typical Keralite family, where the male of the species is totally alienated from household chores, and their sole responsibility is to enjoy the hard work of the opposite sex, encouraging them in every possible way by harsh criticisms and accusations. One cannot be successful in leading a single- woman rebellion, which I have tried and frantically failed, as even the female members of the family see nothing extraordinary in this burden that they are made to bear.  I had to succumb to fate, by fitting myself into the current female –dominated- kitchen-chore-system.

I have butterflies fluttering in my stomach when he is late to home even by minutes.. his sight relives me  from the  tension and I dare not to show him what I had gone through during his few minutes of absence. Hugging or any signs of maternal love was permitted as long as it was cool, then slowly shifted, with a bit embarrassment. I know, in the coming years he would spread his wings wide and try to soar higher and higher, away and away, desperate to find his own self, his own identity.. till then I have to handle this fragile little thing and be with him…

Before him.. to lead him

Behind him.. to encourage him

And  

Beside him , ready with a shoulder  for him ….. 

                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                          LAZIN.M

                                                                                                                                        

Tailpiece: An idea of this piece of writing came up after having a very touching interaction with AIMs of my young male adult students.  I find myself lucky to have a son who is still obedient, loving and values family ties. Music for us is not a compulsive divergence but still a shared experience. His hair is still tidily in its place. A sequel is welcomed here from AIMs with young adult ladies.. However, the characters mentioned above are not fictitious, and any resemblance to living or dead is truly intentional!!