Pune waalo

I am getting a free trip to Pune and would like to make the best out of it. Planning to catch up with some friends, one among them is R, my childhood friend. Langotiya yaars (any generous soul may kindly translate this) like her make me feel so old. She said that she is teaching at MIT, handling second semester MBA students, and has to wear saree to the institute. Not only that, she is the rector for the girls’ hostel. Imagine, girls above 20 calling you ‘Ma’am’?

Have not met her for almost 5 yrs now and I am really looking forward to it. Hope she doesn’t rub her oldness to me and I come back still feeling young and not thinking about my date of manufacture.

Having said that, I read this book called ‘The woman who gave birth to her mother’ by Kim Chernin. Well, women are a complex lot and therefore, we have subjects like ‘women studies’ to confuse people more. This is one of those books. There are about 11 case studies. This is not a bestseller material or a book that stays with you but gives a lot of insight to the relationship between women, mother and daughter specially. These women come and share their stories with the author on how their childhood shaped them to be the woman and the mother that they are today. The stories explore the elements of idealism, guilt, blame, forgiveness and finally of letting go in the mother-daughter relationship.

Parallels can be drawn as our childhood sometimes, shapes our mindset on many things. But it needn’t be mother-daughter all the time. The author also talks about role reversals when the daughter starts to care for the ageing mom.

I was just thinking about my mom when I read this and what I can remember is that, me and sis often, got either yellow or blue dresses until we found the joy of standing in front of the mirror or reached our teens so to say, and started selecting our own dresses. Sometimes, it used to be the same pattern. If I would wear blue, sis would wear the yellow version and vice-versa. I used to pick up sis’ old clothes sometimes. Imagine growing up to wear the yellow or the blue version of what you wore last year!

No, mom is not related to Hitler and she is not boring. She is very proud of me though all she wants me to do is buy gold.

Coming back, to the topic, I’ll be in Pune this Friday.