Amma Jokes!

I know I can talk about her forever! But didn't want to bore you all with her praise all over again. Anyways everyone knows that she was a great woman. A few days ago someone I do not know well, messaged me on Social Media and said "I want to live like your mother. I want my son to work for the community like your mother"; Once a friend saw my mother's photo in the purse of an autorickshaw driver. When asked the man replied, "She is like my mother"; One random woman approached my father and asked about my mothers' history saying, She is going to make her child talk about my mother in an elocution competition in school on the topic "Leaders I want to emulate"; Sorry, there I go again. Just randomly I start praising her again. I will stop here. Instead, I thought I will take this opportunity to talk about her naivety. Our 'amma jokes' in the family! And believe me, these are real and nothing is made up. 

As soon as she finished her MBBS, she joined work in a hospital near her house in Tambaram, Chennai. When they gave her the first month's salary, she took it back to the medical superintendent and told them to keep the salary, thinking that they have given her a lot of money and what will the hospital do if they gave her so much money. And that first salary was apparently Rs.800/-

Once amma went with appa in the car, with appa driving. When Amma's best friend G called her mobile. Amma replied, "G, I can't talk to you now, I have to concentrate on the road"! Okay, my dad is a bad driver. But my mom seriously thought she drove the vehicle every time she is inside one. 

Once appa was reversing the car, with amma for support saying "Varalam pa (Come come)"; Till the car hit a pole and believe me, amma genuinely said "Idichiruchu pa (It has hit something)". 

Amma never knew anything about any politics, and often had fought with me saying, "You are lying, people cannot be that bad". Sadly, she was put into a church committee for the simple reason that they had just created a quota for women and there were only so many people eligible and amma happened to be one. So in the first committee meeting, they started discussing and it became a debate/argument and she started crying and stood up and could not sit down it seems. So they walked her back home and conducted all the other meetings without her. 

Once she went out with her friend N, and N sent her back in her car with her new driver. The driver did not know amma's place. Sadly neither did amma knew the route to her own house (after living 25 years in the same town). So the driver and amma decided to ask someone, and they asked a policeman the route to the house. The policeman saw my mom and saluted her (Most of the town would have been her patient at some point). Now it became embarrassing to ask the policeman the route to her own house. So she just exchanged pleasantries and moved on. So amma finally made the driver get out of the vehicle and ask the route to her house so that the people on the road don't see her asking the way to her own house. 

There are so many. Amma jokes were a routine in the family. We laughed at her naivety and she laughed with us! She somehow protected the purity of her childhood from getting polluted by the darkness of the world. Perhaps therein lies the reason for being loved!  

I will leave you with her famous smile and a few more of my blogs on her. 

To read more about her please go through my other blogs on her

https://samszammy.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-life-so-beautifully-lived.html

https://samszammy.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-women-i-growing-fond-of-by-day.html

https://samszammy.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-last-week-had-been-time-of-intense.html

https://samszammy.blogspot.com/2015/07/my-last-night-with-mother.html

https://samszammy.blogspot.com/2017/07/that-day-as-it-panned-out.html

The writer's dilemma!

I love words! Sometimes, I read and re-read and read again a few sentences and they sound so nice and beautiful. Like Illayaraja and his violin interludes; Rahman and the overtures. Philip Yancey, Dorothy Clarke Wilson, Dominque Lapierre, and Larry Collins,  Harsha Bhogle, NS, DB, and a lot more great people whose play around with words have had me attracted to the English language. 

No, I'm not a language connoisseur. Or a grammar Nazi! I just love the stories, the thoughts, put together like a bunch of flowers tied together on a thread. Single flowers do have the charm! But when put together, it sometimes is otherworldly. 

Did any of you guess my dilemma? I'm sure some of you would have. 

The dilemma of wanting to write, but don't really know what to! Thought block, is a word often thrown around I presume; But do writers also go through the phase where they can't think of anything to write? It sometimes feels terrible when the whole world around is chucking out so many books and here you are struggling to put together a blog. Just a 500-word blog! 

Many times I open my blog, start typing profusely and delete them all. They don't make sense. They just don't. I simply close the computer down and go back to the big bad world of small sentences, Twitter.  

I remember a pleasant October evening in Delhi when the mind just flowed stories. I wrote and wrote and wrote that day. Many of which are still in my drafts folder, but why don't such days happen often? More often than not these days I type and delete and type and delete. The mind just feels blank. Like a bubble wrap, it just bursts out air. 

So back to the dilemma. Should I just sit and push and put pen to paper, and call whatever comes out, a blog, or just wait, patiently and earnestly, that someday, some day, the thought block will be removed and the thoughts will flow like water gushing out of the opened dam. 

I'm waiting for the day the dams will open and perhaps, just write a book, than stopping myself with blogs😉