Spunk

My mother was not a loud person. She was muted. She was quiet (she became scarily quiet in her last days). She was not one to push herself forward in a conversation. 

That’s not to say she was a pushover. That she was not. I recall being afraid of her when I was little. Even though I was much more afraid of Baba, it was more Ma’s figuring out what I had done wrong that frightened me. 

She was not a native speaker of English by any stretch. She spoke in Bengali all the time and in very poor Hindi at other times. Her English was self-taught and come to think of it I don’t know where she learned it because she went to Bengali medium all her life. She must have taught herself spoken English. By that standard she spoke very well. She spoke to her elder son in law in poor but Bengali lilted Hindi and her younger one in similar Bengali lilted English. 

But that didn’t embarrass her by any stretch. She was very comfortable expressing herself and if you didn’t understand that was your problem. She was a fighter. She fought stolidly and quietly but she fought. She never gave up.  At least not for the stuff that mattered. 

My mother has taught me more about life in her death by simply me reflecting on how she lived her life. Somedays I ask myself how should I live the rest of my life, without her? And I know the answer lies in how she lived hers. Love quietly, fiercely and with everything you have.