The trigger to this post is a crispy fried noodle dish that my mother used to make with her own unique sauce.She knew it was my all-time favourite ❤️
It will be 5 years this month since her passing on ...
A memory flares up through a fragrance; of a dish being cooked, of roasted masalas wafting up at random
places.
The aroma of fresh spices and garlic held so tight in the folds of her sari ‘pallu’. The pallu that I furtively wiped my hands and mouth in as and when the need arose.
She knew it but she didn’t let on.
My mother.
One memory leads to another...
Of a crispy fried noodle dish with a sauce that was uniquely hers.
Of her cupboard with its distinctive naphthalene balls-and-Cinthol-soap scent, her clothes with their ‘Mumma’ fragrance.
Of her voice, strident yet gentle,
Of her words so upfront yet true.
How strange a memory can be? Like a limp in a once-injured leg, it reappears, unnoticed until I give it the attention it demands.
Does it appear to gently remind me of my own ageing?
And how I have started relating to my mother in terms of years?
When she was 52, as I am now, how do I remember her?
She lives on through the recipes she made me write down when I married. Through her sarees all in blue and green.
She lives on through fragrances, sometimes a wisp, sometimes in full bloom.
It will be 5 years this month since her passing on ...
A memory flares up through a fragrance; of a dish being cooked, of roasted masalas wafting up at random
places.
The aroma of fresh spices and garlic held so tight in the folds of her sari ‘pallu’. The pallu that I furtively wiped my hands and mouth in as and when the need arose.
She knew it but she didn’t let on.
My mother.
One memory leads to another...
Of a crispy fried noodle dish with a sauce that was uniquely hers.
Of her cupboard with its distinctive naphthalene balls-and-Cinthol-soap scent, her clothes with their ‘Mumma’ fragrance.
Of her voice, strident yet gentle,
Of her words so upfront yet true.
How strange a memory can be? Like a limp in a once-injured leg, it reappears, unnoticed until I give it the attention it demands.
Does it appear to gently remind me of my own ageing?
And how I have started relating to my mother in terms of years?
When she was 52, as I am now, how do I remember her?
She lives on through the recipes she made me write down when I married. Through her sarees all in blue and green.
She lives on through fragrances, sometimes a wisp, sometimes in full bloom.
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