Not only Jewish kids; even this Indian blames his mother

It is my mother's fault. I blame her.

No, it is not about this.  Let me explain.

When we were kids, my father would direct us to go help mother in the kitchen.

The obedient kids that we were, we would go to the kitchen.  And ask amma if she needed any help.

Even as she was cleaning the kitchen and putting things away, her typical response was that there was nothing that we could do.  Sometimes her reply was along the lines of "look around, and do what needs to be done."

Do what needs to be done.  As simple as that.

Guess what we then did?

We looked around. Decided that there was nothing to be done. And we left.

As I got a tad older--still a kid--I remember staying back and helping her with grinding the coffee beans (a manual grinder those days); getting the butter out of the butter milk (yes, manual labor); or wiping the wet dishes and putting them away.

Much later in life, I have told amma more than once that it is how I even teach, and how I even deal with my colleagues.  I tell students and colleagues once or twice what they could/should do, and then it is up to them to do what needs to be done.

I am not like my father who can and will, ahem, nag or order people around if he needed somebody to do whatever that somebody needed to do.  As a cousin remarked back when appa was not the old man that he now is, my father could take command like an army general on a battlefield and boss around very quickly ;)

It is my mother's fault that I am not an alpha male in telling others what they should do. I am an omega male! ;)

It also means that I am all the time thinking to myself, "I told you so!"  Sometimes I even say that aloud to people. Especially to colleagues.

In a recent email, I wrote to one of the people in the university: "My personality is not one to aggressively sell my suggestions, how much ever I believe in them and with all the evidence to back me."  And I forwarded an email from more than three years ago, in which I had provided details on how a certain idea could/should be pursued.  And idea that now they think they want to look at.

In another context, I commented in an email a couple of days ago, "I don't understand why there was so much of resistance to the idea"--an idea that I had suggested two years ago, which they didn't agree with.  And the wrong decision that they made has come back to bite us big time!

Had I taken after my father, I would have commanded a few tanks and charged through with my ideas.  Instead, here I am blogging like this ... because of my mother.

It is all her fault! ;)