By Debu Majumdar “Are you trying to be a Bahn-manush – a cave-man?” my mother would ask whenever she saw my long toenails. I remember those words each time I cut my nails, and wonder why I laughed at those words before. When I was a senior in high school, I remember telling my mother, “Mother, should I become a headmaster of a school? That’s a good position.” She said, “Good. You be a headmaster.” Her round face with the large red mark on her forehead would beam with joy. Then, a few months later I’d tell her, “Mother, teaching in a college is a great profession. I’d like to be a professor.” “Good,” she would happily tell me. “You be that.” Sometime later, I’d tell her, “Mother, Government service is very good. Should I join the Indian Administrative Service?” “What do they do?” she asked. “They run the country. They are the most powerful people, like the magistrates.” “That’s good. You be that.” I told this to my sisters and we laughed. “Mother doesn’t know anything. She is happy with whatever I want to do. One day I teased my mother again. “Mother, I want to become a scientist. Like Newton or Einstein. Won’t that be wonderful?” “That is very good. You can discover new things.” I gave her a hug. She was content with whatever I became. She was married before she could finish high school with a man she had never seen before. I wonder now how my mother had the innate knowledge to encourage her children to become what they desired to be – a teacher, a scientist, or a government officer – it didn’t matter. Because contentment is what mattered in the end, not the position. Life is much bigger. I understood it only forty years later. Debu Majumdar December 23, 1997 |