Ode to Ma and Papa

November is the month of b’days in our family. Ma and Papa have their b’day’s in this month, this is the first time in the last ten years I’ll be home for a part of the month...

So, here’s it is.. my ode to Mom and Pop.

Nature and nurture, I owe them both to you. Thank you. I could not have asked for better parents.

Ma, as I call my mom, is the most talented person, I have ever met. When I was a kid, I thought that there was nothing that she could not do. She could cook anything, she could make anything better ( from people, to stray animals and birds to dying plants…), she could make anything-- dresses, projects, anything… and she never gave up. New dresses appeared magically on the morning of the birthday, whole house was decorated, food for parties of humungous number of people was ready in our magical kitchen…. Most of this magic seemed to happen when we kids were in the land of nod. Thank you Ma, for all those sleepless nights you spent in making our wishes (many of them unspoken) come true.
Ma gave me some gifts I can never thank her enough for. The gift of reading. When I was a kid, she banned ‘popular fiction’ for me (I did read her M&B’s hiding in bathrooms and closets) but thanks to her I had read the classics before I was 15. She got me tons of books from her school library, and everywhere else she could...
The gift of music… we all love listening to music, she sings very well (one of her three masters degrees is in Music) and is one of the few people who, when given any string or a keyboard instrument can figure out how to play it. None of us can live without music … we went to music and dance classes when other kids were watching TV and playing. It was hard to come by these classes in the suburban town and required immense amount of planning and resourcefulness on her part to get us to these classes, but she did. We went there complaining, but today when I can recognize a raga or Indian instrument and tell my daughter about it, I am thankful to my Mom.

Papa, on the other hand is the most disciplined, structured and hardworking person I have ever seen in my life. He can even now, put his finger on the exact file where the negatives from our 1982 Ooty trip are. Truly self made, my Dad came to this new town for a new job and rose thru the ranks to be where he is. He has a system for everything. I still add the way he taught me to some 26-27 years ago, using a mark for a carryover… and I can still add faster than most people around me :) . Growing up my favorite subjects were Maths and Physics and I remember picking up most his engineering books when I went to college ( his Reedhill still lives in my office bookshelf and I pick it up once in a while when I get sick of software :)). My dad loved his job and was very good at it. He is my yardstick for what hardworking and honest person who has not cheated anyone of his due should be. Someday, I hope to be like him.

Ma and Papa are very independent. If I might be so bold to add, perhaps the most independent people I have seen in their generation. They are both from widely divergent backgrounds, Ma from a very hardcore Bengali family and Papa’s parents were the Punjabi’s driven out of Pakistan at partition. Together, they built for us a home where there was tolerance, talent, hard-work and love. We celebrated all festivals from Christmas to Id. We read all kinds of books and listened to all kinds of music and ate all kinds of food. The only thing you were not allowed to do was ‘not be the best you could be’. We were told that we could be whatever we wanted to be, encouraged to make our own decisions and push the limits of the known world.

Thank you, Ma and Papa, for everything you are and everything you gave me. I know I have been vociferous about my complaints in the last 15 years :)
… this is just to tell you, I know and I appreciate everything you are and you have done.