Now and then, reflected in my daughter's eyes is my own face wearing a look I recall vividly. That of my mother. Not the look of reproach she wore in my childhood or the look of desperation she wore during my adolescence but the look she had on at other occasions. Like on Communion Day or Report Card Day or the day I got married. The look that said, I'm so proud to be your mother. I'm so proud to be a mother.

My own mother and I were sworn enemies during my adolescence. Daily battles erupted spontaneously over curfew times, hemlines and my absolute unwillingness to assume any responsibility around the house. My poor father tried to meekly adjudicate, caught in-between two power houses of stubbornness. It was only by my early twenties that the fog of discord began to dissipate. We bonded over bad bosses and the misery they brought. And then there were bad relationships to wade through and to survive. Many a times, in the still of the night when my daughter turns to me and clings for warmth, I remember the warm folds of another embrace; that of my mother. How I had clung to her through the myriad disappointments that life brought. And how she had clung back, giving me hope, infusing me with courage and the will to go on. Many a times, when I am teaching my daughter to read, I am reminded of yet another mother who sat through countless maths lessons, who paid for piano lessons, who devised formulas to make learning easy for me, who made a decision to send me to the best school her money could buy, who taught me lessons of life which endure to this day.

As I look at my daughter I realize that she is the sum total of all the women in my family that came before her. Strong women. Strong Goan women. Women who asserted their independence even though so little was yielded to them. Women whose backs hunched low from ploughing paddy fields during the day, whose hands became coarse from drawing well-water and whose voices sung soft lullabies into the dark of night, as they cradled their sons and daughters to sleep and dreamed of better days to come.

From their wombs sprung another generation of women; women who walked from villages to schools far, far away. Women who saw the dawn of Goan independence, who went to Bombay for further education, who accompanied husbands to work in the barren deserts of Arabia or waited for fathers of their children to return from ships that sailed to distant lands. So that their children may live in hope of better days to come.

As I dance with my daughter and sing lullabies in her tiny ears, I drink a glass of wine to my mother. To all mothers. You are the giver of life, the creator of hope, the keeper of secrets, the nourisher of dreams. You are the torch-bearer who passes on all that is good from one generation to another. You are life itself. Happy belated Mother's Day

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