visit to Sandeep's home

my Mom is Great. The Best.I realize that time and again..but mostly forget to tell her that.
(and later console myself by thinking that I was rendered 'speechless')

I bet this time my "wow! I mean...WOW!" over the telephone conveyed what I wanted to say.

Last week, she read the birthstory of a song "kase sartil saye.." by Sandeep Khare, in a newspaper. Now this was a song that I had translated into hindi last year for Mono, my adopted mommy here at IITK. (my ex-roomie would be a less romantic description.)

My real mom is a die-hard fan of Sandeep's songs (These things run in the family, I guess).
And she's also an avid talker when it comes to describing me and my "achievements" to people.
Throw in the fact that she was perked up by British Nandi's recent response, it wasn't a far way for her to call up Sandeep's home (the number was given in the book of his collected poetry) and ask for an appointment. On the bright Sunday morning of 19th, aai reached the Khare abode in Anandnagar. Sandeep wasn't home, but Soniya, his wife - and their 3 year old daughter received her with warmth. The latter, with an initial reluctance of a toddler who's in the midst of watching a favourite cartoon on CD. But I was told that the reluctance vanished after a chocolate was handed over to her with due haste. Fortunately, it was her "chocolate day". The conscientious parents had made a rule for their pet lamb: She was to save all the chocolates she'd get in a week to eat on Sunday. Talk about aatmasamyama.

So Mom, who'd just gone there to perform a jack-in-the-box sequence of 'pop in, show the translation, pop out', ended up enjoying Soniya's hospitality for a wholesome 1.5 hours.
I hear they talked about many subjects, and it culminated in Mom's advising Soniya upon child-rearing.

My Mom always keeps amazing me. :)