Queen of the Jungle | My Mother

When I was 8, my father, hoping to expand his struggling business, moved our family from our crammed comfortable space to a new cosmo city - Gurgaon.

As the new kid with a funny regional accent and shabby clothes, I felt like an outcast in my posh school, becoming insecure and shy. I aspired to be one of them, so I emulated everything they did and slowly groomed myself. Over a decade, I learnt English (a language foreign to me back then), wore only trendy clothes, watched hundreds of Hollywood movies, listened to pop songs, read classic literature, replaced daal roti sabzi with pasta, croissants, dim-sums, and what not, all in an effort to fit in, to belong!

However my mum’s story is different. Relocating from a small town to a ritzy city didn’t change her ways of living. She didn’t give a dime about "fitting in". In a rather pompous society, she chose to stay true to her multigenerational traditions. In public spaces too, she wore old-fashioned simple saris where other women wore chic and shiny dresses. She ate with her hands, not with forks and knives. Though a highschool drop-out, she confidently conversed with guests in her dialect, Marwari or Hindi and never felt like an outcast.

She devoted 30 years of her life to bringing up a differently-abled child confined to a wheelchair (along with me and my younger brother). Even when our business eventually flourished and we became a part of the community, my mother held onto her lifestyle. Always staying in to tend to my late sister, she never complained about not being able to enjoy the newly acquired luxuries, not going out for dinners or vacations. She sailed through, so seamlessly, despite all the fallbacks.

My mother in her 10 yards of elegance. My mother, the queen of the jungle that this society is.

Artwork inspired by my mother