Dear Mama

You retire today. But I know that you never tire, so you will never re-tire. You are off from your regular duty of administering. I know how much you relished doing it. You have practically thrown yourself into the task of making the surroundings, institutions and everybody around you visibly better than when you first find them. I use the verb ‘have’ instead of ‘had’ because you will always remain this way. There is no past tense in your life nor your career for there is nothing undone, nothing that was wished for and not achieved.

If there is a life packed with action, action and more action, it has to be yours. No travel has been too long, no hour too late for your work. I have looked upon you as a super-human and a super-mom. Life literally threw stones at you and you used them to build a house for all of us to live in. When I look at you, I see you dancing with joy at my wedding; I see you at the gate of our house on a scooter with loads of groceries in the dicky of the scooter; I see you walking into government and non-government offices and commanding respect; I see you leading your staff onto welcoming the chief minister of the state with élan; I see a life so full that there is no room for emptiness. Weathered, conditioned, beaten by the winds, your face today reflects the strength that you have achieved over the decades, the strength you want me to have. Whenever I am low, whenever I feel I am not getting my due, I think of a woman who has worked overtime (without that overtime allowance) to give a better opportunity to her students, her staff and to do more justice to her job. It is then, that I think that I have a long way to go. Your life, your history, your study-career is an example so close to home that I have never been able to think beyond it.

You are not the resting kinds, I know you will take up another administrative assignment. It would hardly matter if it is paid or honorary. What matters is that it must afford you the opportunity to do something radical and different-otherwise it wont be exciting enough for you.

I came into your life clad in that saffron dress when you were close to reaching the peak of your career. The happiness that you exuded at my entry in your life has always been with me-through shine and through rain. I remember you got your PhD degree a couple of months after I came, and we were all one proud family. Your daily routine of getting up way before everybody else, giving me a dose of ‘work hard, it will help you’ and banishing me to the roof-top to study alone has actually led me to finish my own PhD project. Living with you is a daily challenge, of having to prove myself close to what your expectation of ‘perfect’ is. It has worked wonderfully to my benefit.

There is so much that I wish to say today upon the superannuation of a brilliant service. I feel I have not been able to express even half of what I had to say to begin with. Perhaps this is how we all are-lost for words when we need them the most.

But I have found the words that I wanted to say.

I am proud that you are my mother-in-law.