‘During the current Covid-19 pandemic, I often imagine Biji [mother], with her gritty countenance, asking total strangers why they are not wearing a mask, or reprimanding a group of people for not maintaining a minimum social distance. I had already seen her tackling several difficult situations. But how did she get to a position where she could extract compliance and discipline from people around her?
‘The odds were heavily loaded against Biji for most of her wedded life. She lost four children to infant mortality. When Taaya [father, later inflicted with TB and died aged 43] lost his job, she struggled to run our home by stitching clothes or knitting cane chairs. One day in 1956, we had no vegetables, lentils, potatoes or cooking oil left at home. She gave me a one-anna coin to go and buy 200 grams of raw tomatoes, sprinkled salt on them, and we ate them with chapattis (Indian bread).
‘Alone, she braved deprivation but rarely succumbed to hopelessness. Each hardship only made her more determined to face life in a bold, liberated and result-oriented manner...’
J V Yakhmi is a former chairman of the Atomic Energy Education Society in Mumbai and a retired associate director of the physics group at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.
Read here (South China Morning Post, August 7, 2020)
