No, this is not spooky. This is actually true. Much of our Indian upbringing has the effect that family and parents play a major role event until you are 30. We don’t have a culture of moving out and then showing up at our childhood home – say 10 years later – and wondering how things went and changed. When the change is happening we are very much part of it – the home changes along with the people in it.

The most important figure is mother’s. Even if you are 35, you need her. She always has the best advice to offer and the best part is that – she knows you inside out and knows what clicks you and what ticks you.  I too, though being an independent woman, living away from parents for 10 years now – need her all the time.

So much am I a dependent soul that any one’s mommy becomes a very important parental figure for me. This is the reason may be why most of my friends’ parents are friendlier with me. Parents are a weakness in all ways for me.

So, when I go home for the weekend and see my mom toiling around the home – cleaning and gardening and picking on dad – I laugh at her; saying – “Mommy! Don’t be so paranoid about everything!”

“You will understand when you are in my shoe!” she retorts back.

Anything out of place; whether it is a bill, a tea-cup, plate, spoon – out of place and there goes the woman – screaming around and killing the offender with her words. I and dad have had remotely encountered a lot of such skirmishes.

Come to think of it – even the garbage can outside the house is not safe from this. The Garbage can is divided into different kind of bags – one for non-degradable, degradable, non-veg food items (to be kept out of the reach of dogs and cats slinking around).

And so when the yearly trip came into discussion and mom left for her native with the house in my charge, I decided to go back and recall my detailed party plans. But gosh! I should have seen me. The moment I flung my clothes on the bed, I would smack me right across face. I would take the duster and run around the home like a lunatic wiping every single piece of furniture, take the mop and attack the floors, take the can to run and fetch milk, take the shopping bag and bolt for groceries.

Height of my prowess reached climax when I cancelled the party – the paranoia reaching the point that I could not bear to know the cleaning I would have to do after party and people messing around and sitting here and there, touching and meddling with the items on mantle-piece. Heck! It is annoying.

And now, I bow  down to the woman who runs the show single-handedly. Not only does she manage the way things are run, she manages me, brother and her husband. She must be the less noticed person but when things have to be done seamlessly, you can count only on the mother.

I always tell my mom now that she has frequently started taking vacations and visiting people that whenever she is out of station, she leaves her soul behind and it possesses me. I, thereby, act the next-in-hand and take control like she does.

Indeed the woman – she is so powerful that she leaves her magic behind that takes care of her castle until she is back…