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
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| 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)
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| 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 …..
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!!
