You could say we’ve almost grown up together, my son Ashish and I. Not because I was a child bride or a teenage mom, but the fact that when he was one-year-old, we suddenly found ourselves alone having lost his dad. Perhaps it is the subsequent multiple-role relationship — playing mother and father (not always successfully) along with sister and buddy to my son — that continues to bond us. Ditto for him, I guess. I recall instances when I saw Ash literally grow up before my eyes, like Gulliver in an animation film.
He was around five years old, on Mummy’s day off, when we went to watch the film Jungle Book. In predictable Delhi male fashion, a man grabbed me, taking advantage of the crowded auditorium entry. I told the guy off. All at once, pandemonium followed, with Ash, all of two-and-a-half foot high, grabbing the assaulter by his legs, lecturing him aloud to apologise to me. I watched my little son take on the role of mother’s protector, perhaps for the first time. Not with pride, just a tinge of sadness.
At the age of 15, Ashish made a film on the homeless in New Delhi’s winter, Under the Open Sky. Imagining inherent cinematic talent in his genes inherited from both parents, I bullied him into studying cinema. He did complete film studies, but followed his own heart for post-grad degrees in finance, now his career. I do plead guilty to occasionally having enforced my own biases at the cost of being insensitive to his individuality. No more. When Ash was leaving for university at age 17, a friend’s mother confessed to laying an extra plate on her table, for her son in England months after he left India. I didn’t do anything as heroic. But I did at times succumb to bringing the sounds of home into his Toronto apartment via my speaker phone: Diwali crackers, Hindi film songs... sometimes, it’s worked as an antidote to homesickness, and brought both of us some laughs and fun memories.
To Barack Obama, a big thanks for helping cement our bonds. Following his landmark maiden speech at the Democratic rally in 2004, Ashish continued to update me on this man to watch out for. We chat briefly almost each morning India time. I inform him of the headlines of the newspapers in New Delhi. We discuss new films, old relationships, cricket matches, the world of global finance... we usually agree, except on the last theme. Still, we have both learned to listen to each other’s point of view. Neither has succeeded in converting the other so far, but we can now agree to disagree, if necessary. Today, we are almost mature — together.
The writer is a film director
