My Mami

Have you ever met someone whom you instantly admire and are in awe. Well I have and its none other than my Mami. My Mama's (Mom's brother) wife.

I had come to India in '89 when I was seven and it was the first time I had met her or rather remember meeting her coz she would have seen me as a baby. We had gone to Mysore to visit them. They had a beautiful house with a large lawn. We were forbidden to walk on the grass and so we used to play in the muddy kitchen garden at the back. That time my cousin Zainab was born. Today she is a beautiful teenager.

I had gone for a weekend to Mysore and that's when I actually saw my mami not as my aunt but as an individual. She is a dynamic personality. She can cook a five course meal in an hour including cleaning her kitchen spot clean. She knows how to makes the tastiest meals in the least time and effort. She reads a lot and we got time to sit and chat and she told me how she met my Mamaji. She was in her 10Th when he had come to see her. At that time, a school girl, marriage was the last thing on her mind. She told her mom that 'I don't want to marry that bhai (brother)'. My uncle however was smitten by her and used all relatives to get her to say yes. The wedding was fixed after she graduated from high school and was married at eighteen.

"When I got married, I didn't know how to cook a single dish. My mom wrote me the recipe for tea that I would at least make tea for my husband." Today my mami is one of the best cook's of our family. She and my mama make the most admired couple. They have a chemistry unlike anyone else. They are always together. My mama would be lost without her. "He wears whatever I pick. He will not shop for even a handkerchief. He stands in the shop while I select his clothes." Whenever my mama has to go for business trips, he takes my mami along.

If you'd meet my mami, she is a bundle of energy. she will narrate something mundane in such a way that it was the best adventure you had. She mingles will anyone and everyone and you just love her company. Not only is she beautiful outwardly but also a confident and successful woman. Had she been born in today's age I won't be surprised if she would have set up her own company or run a PR firm. She's that material.

Given a choice I would love to have the zeal and zest that is in my mami. She is an inspiration!