My mom — the maverick.
My dad often describes my mom as a shooting star, she would walk into a room and light it up completely, dazzling everyone with an effortless charismatic brilliance. People who have ever met my mom, will agree that she is remembered particularly for 2 things -
1) Her raw magnetism & charisma
2) Her tremendous sense of empathy, that allowed her to form, almost instantaneous, deep routed connections with people she had just met, who will fondly remember that meeting for years later.
I got to experience this dazzle first hand when I was studying in LKG.
Between the ages of 2–10 my mother was mostly an enigma to me. A corporate goddess shrouded in mystery and glamour. Usually it was my father who attended parent teacher meetings. So I was very surprised (pleasantly) when while playing on the merry go round outside, I saw my mom pull into the school parking in a wine red Honda city, with the windows rolled down, playing material girl by madonna loudly.
All the other parents (mostly dads in their sensible button down shirts and chinos) talking about the stock market and the TDS level of ground water, stopped to stare questioningly to where the racket was coming from.
Unlike me who mostly loves to be a wall flower, my mom knew how to make an entrance! With her devil may care attitude, power dressing chiffon silk kurta, ruby red lips, fair skin, short cropped hair and a pair of wayfarers perched on her nose. She was the perfect mix of intimidating & intriguing. Almost instantly all the eyes of my fellow classmates and their parents were on her. She looked like someone who had steeped not just out of a magazine, but from a different planet altogether!
She removed her sunglasses, and smiled warmly at all the other kids and said to me “ Well Meena, aren’t you going to introduce me to all your little friends?”
I certainly was by no means the most popular in my class. I doubt half the kids new I existed. I wasn’t the funniest, the loudest, the smartest, the messiest, I was just perceived as that quiet kid with the unibrow, who mostly liked to read, and who hated sharing her crayons with anyone else (H wants me to tell you the crayon part hasn’t changed even now)
So I just stared at her request with a vacant expression on my face.
What happened next, would result in not only every kid knowing my name. But also shooting me to LKG celebrity status for the rest of my term. I’m talking about, more famous than the kid who shoved a live caterpillar up one nostril. Yup, like Kanye Yeezy famous.
Looking at all our blank faces, my mom took things into her own hands. Literally. With a quick snap she opened the clasp of her cobalt blue Hidesign bag. She dug around, and with the flourish of a magician pulling a rabbit out from a hat, she brought out a set of post it’s (post it’s were super rare in the 90s, so this was a big deal) and a sharpie pen.
She called to the little boy nearest to her, and asked him if he liked birds. I knew him only as thayir sadam boy because he brought thayir sadam to class everyday and ended up declaring to everyone, everyday. He smiled and shook his head shyly trying to hide behind the folds of his mother’s saree. Casually, while asking him his name and what his favourite color was. My mom’s fingers moved like lightning, folding the little post it, into the most spectacular origami crane. My classmate who had completely forgotten his shyness by now, screamed in joy that his name was Shyam, and watched in utter fascination as my mom handed him the crane, completely customised with his name, that she had written in big, fun loopy letters with her sharpie.
Within seconds, I was pushed aside as a frenzied mob or kindergarten ers screamed out requests at my mom. A daisy! A doggie! A butterfly! Shaktiman! were all popular request. My mom, completely unflustered, spent the next 25 mins making an assortment of origami ladybirds, frogs, dogs, boats, and cranes, each customised with the names of their tiny requester.
My mom as usual saved the best for last and presented me infront of all the others with an origami rose with the words meena written inside a tiny heart on the side of the rose.
From that day on, kids would constantly badger me on when my mom would be visiting next or if they could come over to my house to play!
This was further cemented by the fact that for my birthday party. My mom designed personalised Birthday invites on Microsoft paint, printed them out, out them in matching pink envelopes for me to hand out! Kids who didn’t even know me, were dying to be invited, even trying to bribe me with licks of their lollipops.
For her It was just a tiny gesture to entertain some bored kids who where waiting, or maybe she sensed it would help me make friends. For me it will be just one of many precious gems in my memory box, that always make me swell with pride and say “Yup, I am Pamela Ramalingam's daughter.”
