mum's 70th!

june 1959 was tumultuous...mum had just got her BEd results...she had passed! and, as if to celebrate, she announces to her parents that she's going to marry joe - capping a 6year courtship despite severe objections from her parents. that he was 12 years older...that he wasn't a brahmin...and that he was an alcoholic!

all this and more, i am getting to know, as i plod my weary way trying to piece together his life story on videotape...

some old friends i spoke with recalled how marie stood by joe through all the objections and adversities and how they really loved each other. she was 23 and he 35 when they married in bombay on june 8th - her birthday. her older sister - anne gave me this fabulous photograph late last year along with a whole bunch...my mum, she had burnt the old b/w family album some time after my dad had died...

through the fish-eyed lens of tear stained eyes
i can barely define the shape of this moment in time
far from flying high in clear blue skies
i come spiralling down
to the hole in the ground where i hide.

memories n tears welled aplenty day before night, as old friends and family gathered to toast mum on her 70th birthday...and to celebrate her joys having overcome half her life without dad. her oldest friend - aunty celine set the mood early that evening...it had been 49 (!) years of knowing mum and "her ups and downs". as elegant as ever, she raised the toast as mum's face went from pensive to ecstatic. anil's recollection of mum's resolve to ensure that there'd always be jam n butter at the table, brought several lumps to several throats.

and me? i didn't talk...nor shoot...felt miserable about being so hopelessly stuck. just watched what sudheer had shot that evening...simply wonderful... am glad i didn't shoot... dying maybe i...if not already dead!