My mother, Her painted feet

This entry is a part of the contest at BlogAdda.com in association with imlee.com

When I was a child, I often spied on my mother as she would rush into the bathroom, first thing after coming home-- to wash her feet. She would soap and scrub and water till her milky-white feet with red painted toe nails glistened pure.

Yes, I loved and envied my mother’s feet. Utterly feminine with soft heels, long toe nails with silver toe-rings, and always painted. I, on the other hand, had frog feet. I loved and envied my mother’s arms too—smooth, always moist and hairless. And her belly that peeked from beneath her sari. Everytime my mother entered the room, it was like the full moon shone—a full moon draped in the most colourful saris. Yes, she loved bright colours—mostly red and vibrant pink and yellow and orange.

But don’t mistake me; I was not crazy or devoted to my mother. On the contrary, I alternatively yearned and hated her. Most of my teenage years were spent fighting her—resisting, struggling, yelling, running away from her. Most of my twenties were also spent that way.

You see, for my mother, I was her muse. “Bhavana” was her pen name when she wrote before her marriage. My name.

So when she combed and oiled my long childhood tresses, she combed and oiled her muse’s hair. When I danced, her muse danced. When I sang, her muse sang. The daily upheavals of my life were dramatic turns in the act which she had somehow scripted. All of which, one day, would lead to that fantastic climax. Yep, I know usually the author welcomes the muse to speak through her but in this case, her muse was her mouthpiece.

I, on the other hand, yearned to be her daughter.

She struggled to reconcile the artist with the mother.

For years I fought to be not her muse, to purge myself of her presence...much in the same way Mozart ran from the haunting spectre of his dad (or at least as per the movie “Amadeus”). But she filled me—in the quiet evenings in the lonely apartments of New Mexico-- submerged the recesses of my mind while the house raged. I remember writing endlessly about her, hoping to heal through writing:

Mother, under the spring trees on that road over the lakes—walking now here, now there. Mother, hunched over the fence, staring at a football game. Mother, early morning on Diwali. Mother, at Conoor. Mother, as she cooked in the steaming hot afternoon. Mother, during her periods. Mother, in pain—old sari, the smell of her mouth, her shrill voice, the empty kitchen, the long thin fingers...Mother, Mother, Mother.

Now after wandering around the world for many years and after having met many an unconventional woman, the muse has come to her being. This 58 year-old who invited me to share a “pipe” at a local park, that 50 year-old with whom I danced through the night, this 55 year-old who had earned her bachelor’s at 45 and now studied chaotic theory and perhaps had a breast reconstruction surgery, that 65-year-old who made the most exquisite puppets and had the most awful mood swings and that 60 year-old who invited women to “women can change the world” dinners, to a 50+ year old woman who dj’ed soulful music on facebook, to now a woman who nags over cyberspace.

I returned home last year to my home and looked at the artist again—this crazy 13-year-old who never grew up, who probably would have found her groove amongst the flower-children of 60s in United States, who struggled mightily to keep her love for art alive, who begged and begged for her stories to be published. But the artist was no longer there. She was now an old woman with bloated legs and cracked heels and unpainted toes. Years of loneliness, the trauma of her muse’s rejection bore down deep and cracked—yes, even, her heels. Now the mother emerged—willing, wanting, craving...

This past week I took my mother to a parlour—the first time ever for her—for a pedicure. After the staff had cleansed, scrubbed, cut and filed and massaged her legs, I handed over nail polish—a red polish. She looked at me with grey eyes—Bhavana, I am too old for this. I pressed it back again into her palms.

Mother, your muse is back. Create your art again!