“What was your mother like when you were a child?” my son Saqib asked me.
She was beautiful! Oval face, big black eyes, deep brown complexion, and jet black hair in a plait reaching up to her hips, and a smile that would bring a smile to your face; to anyone’s face. She loved to look beautiful, always in light makeup, hair carefully parted in the middle, gold bangles and earrings, and dressed impeccably in style. It didn’t matter if she was going out shopping, visiting or for a walk in the park, she always got dressed up in her finery. She carried herself with grace and believed that a woman should look pretty. I loved just looking at her.
I called her Mummy.
The image I recall is her sitting at her Singer sewing machine in the verandah, bent over as she held the fabric under the moving needle, the machine whrring, a pause as she adjusted the fabric, and then whrrr again. She stitched all our clothes, her clothes, and me and my sister’s clothes. Mummy was the perfect seamstress and embraced style. She would scour western magazines, making a note of a new style for a collar, placement of buttons, a frill, a fringe, or just the cut of the dress. As a child, we wore frocks (the British version of ‘dresses’). She would stitch identical frocks for my sister Neena and I, having us look as twins. People would admire our clothes and compliment Mummy on her good taste and sense of style.
When it was time for Daddy to come home from work, usually around lunch time (in Pakistan we had late lunches), she would wrap up her sewing, and get prettied up, applying fresh makeup, combing and plaiting her hair, and spraying a bit of perfume. She believed in looking nice for your husband. When Daddy got home, she gave him her undivided attention. We would have lunch, and then Daddy would take his afternoon siesta and Mummy would be shushing us, “Quiet, Daddy is sleeping.” In the late afternoon, she and Daddy would sit in the verandah and have tea, while we played in the lawn.
She had a high-pitched voice and a commanding presence. The voice I recall most is giving orders to the domestic help. We had a full-time live-in cook and an orderly (attendant provided by the army); and a part-time cleaning woman, once a week, a dhobi (washer man), and once a week maali (gardener). Mummy loved being a homemaker, but as you can tell, she didn’t cook or clean. She managed. The only time she cooked and washed dishes was when we lived in England in the early 1950s during the first five years of my life.
Making her home a place of comfort was her priority. Every morning, she would give the orderly her grocery list and some cash. The next morning, she would get an accounting from him and note it in her diary. Once a week when the dhobi came, she would have him count the laundry: 3 male shirts, 2 female pajamas, 3 bedsheets, etc., make a note in her diary, and send him off. A week later he would return with the clean bundle, and as he sat on the floor and counted the pieces: 3 male shirts…Mummy, sitting in her chair, would check them off her list. She loved flowers and when the maali came, she would sit in her lawn on a wicker chair, and instruct him on where to weed, where to aerate the soil, where to plant the seedlings, and then sit back and watch the flowers bloom.
Mummy was chatty and sociable, charming and a great storyteller. Women flocked to her and enjoyed being in her company. As a mother, she was strict. She was always telling me and Neena what to do, what not to do as in: don’t make a mess, do your homework, don’t get your pretty dress dirty, eat with your mouth shut, don’t cry like a baby, do, don’t, do, don’t. It wasn’t quite like the Von Trapp children in the Sound of Music, but you get the picture. There was a time for everything, life was like clockwork, and Mummy was the officer-in-charge.
Always pretty, always looking beautiful. That is what Mummy was like when I was a child.
On this day in 2014, Mummy departed from this world, leaving me with all these memories of my childhood. Rest in Peace, Mummy.
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