Childhood ends, Motherhood doesn’t?

My mom was a teacher during my childhood and she used to tell me that she is Devaki (Mother of Krishna) and my grandmother is Yashoda (foster mother of Krishna) and coincidently my name is Nanda Kishor. I was raised mostly by my grandparents even though I used to live with my parents. She used to take care of me very well in the form of food, stories, scolds, and whatnot. I grew up and became a teenager as I had no option. I left my childhood behind, but my grandmother didn’t leave her motherhood.

I was eating michhar(also called as mixture in some part of somewhere sometimes) with my friends which I brought from home to the hostel on my return. Biting a peanut from it kind of took me back to the days when I used to wait for the 4 PM bell to ring so that I could run to ammumma (that’s what I am gonna call my grandmother). She will make something out of something every day and having it with tea used to be my IKIGAI then. Sometimes she will fry something, on other days it will be michhar and rusk. You eat a handful of michhar while 10% of it falls from your palm, which makes the situation spicy, and now you dip the rusk in tea and have a bite to calm the situation repeating this was pretty fun giving it a climax of gulping the remaining tea. Then I run to play cricket with my friends without an umpire, it’s fun, will share about that on some other day.

The above paragraph is not a food review, it’s more about how much effort she used to put into making me happy and healthy only to handover me over to teenage some years down the line far from her both in distance, thoughts, understanding, and beliefs. She used to enjoy nurturing me, I didn’t notice this then, and still, all of this is my assumption. She was pretty good at it also, she used to make chapatis delicately and it hurts me now that I have to eat these half-ass cooked ones from restaurants here. She used to do everything as perfectly as how a working professional approaches a project. Maybe I was one of her projects, but not the one right after my mother. She became a mother when my mother was born. My mother left her childhood, but my grandmother didn’t leave her motherhood.

I have heard about this friend of my mother who used to live with them in rent and my ammumma used to take care of her a lot, after that many others too. Then I and my sister came, and as we left, she wanted some new child to take care of. It’s interesting how she couldn’t leave motherhood and choose something new. She gladly found her cousin's grandchildren and she really loves them. She makes special dishes for them and used to tell me when I used to visit her like “Hey he(my cousin) is just like you, he likes Valval (One of the Konkani Dishes), he doesn’t eat anything else”. She was delighted whenever she used to share about such things where she made them something and they really liked it. It is evident that she wants something to engage herself in and is unknowingly nurturing human beings to become happy and healthy. That’s a wonderful hobby I guess, I donno personally.

I was talking about this to one of my friends and she told me that this might be only true for women who had the time frame to master motherhood, and is not the case for working professionals who have an equal or bigger purpose in life than children. I am aware of the fact that not every woman desire to be a mother and I really respect them, in fact, I support that as finally people are choosing themselves over other things and want to genuinely make an impact in the world in various domains. But the ones who joined the club of motherhood, do they leave the club or they are still in search of something to nurture be it a child, dog, or anything that will grow into something that will forget everything.

Entering Adulthood

I guess I have crossed the denial stage by now. Haven’t embraced this yet, but I can see myself enjoying a good day doing nothing somewhere down the line. I am 21 and officially out of the cool phase of life namely Teenage. Adulthood is hard, and there is no “but” at the end of this sentence to state some great things about it. Teenage was like a low-end gaming pc trying to run Cyber Punk 2047 and still succeeding. Adulthood is like you have got the best Graphics Card out there and yet you can’t even install GTA V as it's tiring. So instead, you just play something already installed.

There is no one to surprise you with plans or food. You have to order something after scrolling for hours through the things you want to eat and then ending up ordering something enough to qualify for that 30% OFF coupon. The only surprise awaiting you is waiting for the food because even the delivery partner is in adulthood and they have decided to deliver two orders in a single run. You gotta make plans for you to go out, buy food, and watch movies. This was the part that sounded fun some 5 years ago when I used to think of having all the freedom to do whatever I wanted right? 

You get interrupted very often by thoughts, sleep, responsibilities and deaths. Yes, I mean everything listed there. I still can’t believe how we used to spend hours doing the same activity be it playing cricket or reading something in the old days. God! I am finally using “in the old days” in a sentence. We used to rarely get interrupted that too mostly for food or scolds. No one even scolds me these days, which is interesting. Thoughts have become my best friend and they are sometimes genius like now, they help me write, but at times they are just there to keep me in the interrogation cell asking infinite questions like how that person might have felt when I told them I can’t join them for the trip.

You get drained so easily. Even a good day is so tiring. Often you find it normal to sleep the next day after having a blast today. Energy has become the new currency. I have to calculate multiple times before deciding whether going out for a movie at midnight is worth it as tomorrow I won’t be able to wake up by 8.30 thus skipping my breakfast only to end up spending more on lunch and that resulting in… okay I will stop, trust me my thoughts have just started and they are the only ones who don’t get tired. Interestingly I get tired after thinking for a while now. The brain is so magical, it thinks for hours about random things escalating through imaginary situations only to realize it has been overthinking and then proceeding to overthink why it has been overthinking.

I know now that whether this is an article or blog or just me venting out, needs closure. Now I have the pressure to somehow make this positive. So that the reader in their adulthood gets some hope after spending their energy reading till now. I don’t know honestly. I guess that’s what adulthood is for me. “I don’t know honestly” whatever the hell this is. I am in control of most things now. I can schedule movies to watch on the calendar. I can stay poor for 3 days and buy some good food on the 4^th day. I can hustle through the weekdays only to disappear into a good sleep on Sunday. I can go out to drink tea some 3 kilometers away as I feel that can help me start my work. I can do a hell lot of things. I can even select what to do. Now that I read this last paragraph, hell yeah, I feel like I can decide things for myself. I know most of the choices are gonna end up being straight-up dumb. I will pat on my back and write about the dumb things some months later for you all maybe. It’s time to do some dumb things till my knee hurts or I feel hungry or sleepy.