My Funny Mother

My Funny Mother... In the early 2000s, she took the multi-million dollar offers in her spam folder very very seriously. To her, they had probably chosen her to give her their fortunes and inheritances. Thank God, she talked to us about her impending windfall. By the time we could tell her these were scammers, she had already sent each of them about 3 or 4 emails in response to their distress calls. Thankfully no banking information was disclosed. Her emails to them were hilarious to say the least. She would write that she was totally empathetic to their ‘reaching out to her.’ She never wondered why she was the ‘chosen one.’ She was ‘very interested’ in travelling to Nigeria among other countries. And later she could totally laugh at herself for being like this. This gullible person was entirely different from the college-principal persona that I saw all my life. That person was someone all the students feared, and at the same time looked up to. She could see through anyone’s lies, she could catch anyone bluffing. She knew the minutest details about her students – from names of their villages, to names of the Sarpanch of that village, to their fathers’ names. “Madam Principal is taking a round” were the most dreaded words we could hear - even if there was no reason to fear her. Still everyone, including me, wanted to stay out of her way. As an administrator, she was a success – right from Gidderbaha College, to Lopon College, to Sang Dhesian College. Sometimes, she did make that ‘principal’ face at home too, and we objected to it promptly. But mostly, she was the same innocent self that anyone could fool – but only in her personal life, never on the professional front. And I would always wonder how ! If I had asked her how, she would have smiled her big shiny smile that said goodbye to this world today 7 years ago. We celebrate her life everyday. Posted - July 28 - 2022