As the old Sanskrit couplet reminds me, there is the birth mother, and then all kinds of other mothers who played important roles in my life. The following is a slightly edited version of an old post about the women who literally made my life sweet!
Mother made plenty of sweets for various special religious events and regular days. My favorites were the cashew sweet and the gulab-jamuns that she made. I often swung by the kitchen and the pantry areas whenever mother was not around and gobbled up sweets that were off-limits.
As a kid, I ate sweets all the time. From morning until night. Sweets any time. It continued on even into my young adult phase.
As an adult, it was always an additional pleasure to listen to my grandmothers recall stories about my fascination for sweets. An incident that grandmother recalled often, which always made me feel special, related to a milk-sweet, which was her specialty. To make this "thirattipal,", my grandmothers patiently stirred, and stirred, and stirred milk for hours until it boiled down to the sweetest delight ever. Back then, there was no tins of condensed milk that could have made it easier.
As a kid, I ate sweets all the time. From morning until night. Sweets any time. It continued on even into my young adult phase.
As an adult, it was always an additional pleasure to listen to my grandmothers recall stories about my fascination for sweets. An incident that grandmother recalled often, which always made me feel special, related to a milk-sweet, which was her specialty. To make this "thirattipal,", my grandmothers patiently stirred, and stirred, and stirred milk for hours until it boiled down to the sweetest delight ever. Back then, there was no tins of condensed milk that could have made it easier.
I was about five years old and was in Sengottai when she decided to make this milk sweet for me. The process started late in the evening. I was apparently sitting right by her side and started falling asleep, which is when I made my grandmother promise to wake me up after she was done making it. I wanted to eat that sweet as fresh as I could get them.
The extra kick in the story was when she described how she woke me up and I ate it half-asleep. And then woke up in the morning and asked for the sweet before eating or drinking anything else.
It was well into a few years of life in the US when it dawned on me that I hadn't ever thanked them. I had never thanked my mother, my grandmothers, my aunts, and my great-aunts, for making all those heavenly sweets.
The extra kick in the story was when she described how she woke me up and I ate it half-asleep. And then woke up in the morning and asked for the sweet before eating or drinking anything else.
It was well into a few years of life in the US when it dawned on me that I hadn't ever thanked them. I had never thanked my mother, my grandmothers, my aunts, and my great-aunts, for making all those heavenly sweets.
I owe a lot to all those mothers who literally sweetened up my life.
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