Manju & her mother Nirmala - tribute 8 - family Mother's day compilation

 

Manju & her mother Nirmala

Anandam - Manju's grandma

A tribute to my cousin Nirmala, as recounted by her daughter Manju.

“A mother’s love is the purest gift life can give — gentle, selfless, comforting, and endless. Even when she is no longer physically beside us, her love continues to guide us every single day.

When I hear the word “Mother” or “Amma,” two people immediately come to my mind — my Ammumma (mother’s mother) and my Amma. As a child, I used to call my Ammumma “Amma” and my own mother “Baby Amma.” The reason behind that is actually a very small but precious memory in our family. I have heard that when my elder brother Manish was told there was a baby in Amma’s womb when she was expecting me, he started calling her “baby’s Amma…*Baby Amma.*” Somehow, that name stayed, and even I grew up calling our mother “Baby Amma.” These may seem like very small things, but today they are some of the most precious memories I hold close to my heart.

Since my Amma was working, it was mostly my Ammumma who took care of us in our younger days. Slowly, all of us moved back to Kerala except my Amma, as she continued working in Mumbai and Chennai. Maybe that is also why many of my childhood memories are more closely connected with Ammumma, while the memories I have with Amma, though fewer, feel extra special and deeply precious to me.

My mother was not just a parent to me; she was my strength, my comfort, my safe place, and one of my biggest blessings. Whenever she came home to visit on her days off, she would make my brother’s and my favourite foods with so much love. She would even prepare separate dishes for each of us, making sure both of us got exactly what we liked. She also never forgot to give me pocket money whenever I needed it, no matter what.

Those moments always felt extra special and remain very close to my heart. Along with those beautiful memories, I also remember our small fights, silly arguments, and little moments of irritation — things that once felt ordinary but today make me smile and miss her even more.

She also loved my friends dearly and treated them like her own, always making their favourite foods, talking to them with so much affection, and making everyone feel welcomed, comfortable, and cared for. That was just the kind of person she was — someone who spread warmth and love wherever she went.

Even after my marriage, whenever she visited Mumbai, one thing she loved doing was shopping for me — especially choosing earrings and dresses. She somehow always knew exactly what I would like.

No matter how busy she was, she would never miss calling me — at least three or four times a day — just to check if I had eaten, reached safely, or simply to talk to me and her grandkids for a few minutes. At that time, her constant reminders to eat on time and take care of myself used to irritate me. Today, those calls are what I miss the most.

As I grew older, I began to understand the depth of her sacrifices and silent strength even more. Today, my feelings for her are filled with gratitude, admiration, and longing. You only realize with time how much of your comfort and happiness came from a mother’s quiet presence.

My Amma always wanted to enjoy life to the fullest. She loved people, food, shopping, and creating happy moments for everyone around her. Even today, I sometimes feel that if she had taken a little more care of her health, she might still have been here with us. That thought stays with me often.

I was 33 when she passed away, and she was only 58. What I wish most is that I had more time with her — more conversations, more memories, and more moments of her together with my kids.

A mother’s love never fades. It lives within us — in our habits, our values, our strength, and the love we share with others.

In loving memory of my Amma — forever loved, forever cherished, and forever missed.”

 

Manju’s text left me feeling felt her emotion so strongly as she has expressed her love for her mother & grandmother who are long gone. I know people will love what she has written. 

In her text, I see the same sentiment of someone we loved who once physically took up space in our lives and then passed away and the effects that creates. The void created gets filled by memories, snippets of emotions and flashbacks, aha moments and the lingering & desperate gaps. Nirmala or Manju’s baby Amma was Nimmichechi, my cousin. I spent a fair amount of time with her while she lived with us for a while in Mumbai. 

Find the story I have written about Nimmichechi’s wedding day while I was still a baby here.

 

Lekha - 6 months in - Chapter 3 - The Chronicles of the Youngest Child

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Sujatha & her mother Sarada - tribute 7 - family Mother's day compilation

 This is a tribute to my older maternal cousin Unni’s wife Sarada. Their family lived not far from my home. They have two daughters Sujatha and Sangeeta. Being one year older than Sujatha, we both literally spent a large part of our childhood and school vacations together.

To me, Saradachechi is and has always been a person who has been extremely kind & humble. She however possesses amazing qualities that I’m sure everyone who meets her notices.

I, for one, have never seen her getting angry. Sure, she did what mother’s need to do to; teach & correct their children, but her core is stable, calm and very positive. She has always shown me over the years that, come what may, one’s destiny can be kept on a ‘good’ graph if one can keep one’s emotions & attitude in check.

I asked Sujatha to tell me some memories about her mother and here’s what she said:

“The three qualities I love about my mom are sincerity, hard work and an ever-loving nature. I have many fond memories with Amma but something that will stay with me is this one. During the 10th board exams for the history exam, I was very anxious. Amma told me that she would help me and we worked through the subject. Later, I was unable to sleep and Amma sang me her favourite lullabies to ease my nerves. I slept with her voice and words working their magic. Also, I wanted to see a familiar face when I would come out of the exam hall so Amma took a day off from work. There she was sitting and waiting for me outside the exam hall, creating with her love an important moment of a wish coming true for eternity. “

Sujatha adds, “I’m 46 years old. I have been married for 20 years now. I think I love and respect her a lot more now due to the distance between our houses. She has been the backbone of our family and has always kept everyone tight knit. She is very hardworking and God fearing. She spends her retired life doing things she loves. I also have tried to imbibe some of her qualities of being sincere and hardworking in my professional and family life.”

For me, I remember the joy and delight of those early interactions with my cousins. Thanks to Saradachechi, their home always wore a warm welcome and I cherish the memories of my childhood spent around them.  

#amma #mothersday #motherslove #mother 

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Jyoti & her mother Jaya - tribute 6 - family Mother's day compilation

 

My father's older brother's family lives in Nagpur. Since I lived in Mumbai and as a child, meeting any of them was very rare but our families still managed to build and maintain beautiful bonds over the years. This was even before the advent of today’s technology.

My uncle was the oldest of my father’s siblings and his daughter Jaya is the oldest of all the children of my generation while I'm the youngest. The range of ages in between the two of us cross over twenty years and as a result my niece, Jaya's daughter Jyoti is actually older to me by a few years. 

I asked Jyoti to describe her mother's qualities and give me a glimpse into her life. This is what Jyoti listed as her mother’s three best qualities which she says are among many others.
1. Gentle at heart.
2. Goes out of way to help others.
3. Very hard working even, at this age.

“With time,” says Jyoti, “I have started respecting and loving her more. Now, I realize how important her strict attitude towards me was. It has helped me become strong, independent and humble at the same time.

Amma shifted to her current home that’s situated in a colony after retirement. It is not easy for anyone to settle down in a new place, especially at 72. But she has not only made herself comfortable there but has also become an integral part of the township she is staying in. Everyone around knows her as a very gentle aunty and most of the young ladies pour out their problems to her. She makes them feel at home and also provides support (physically / morally) as much as possible. They all become restless if she is not around for a few days.

Even at this age Amma is managing the house alone and also doing all chores by herself. Because of this also people look up to her”.

On a personal note, what I love about Jayachechi is that she always encourages me to write and has been doing so from much before I started my blog. Every poem I wrote back then got a positive reaction from her and her interest in my poetry has acted as a brick that went into building my writing skills which are now getting bigger and hopefully better.

#mothersday #familytribute #relationships

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Home is where the Heart is - Dr. Audra Brazauskaite - Abstract artist and Art Therapist and Lecturer

 

When I was a teenager, if someone had told me that one day I would be writing about people from places like Brussels, Sri Lanka and Suriname, I would have laughed. I was never that interested in the world as a young person. All these places were far away and the world was a big place. My own world was huge in my mind and what it represented in my life took all my energy. The world out there had no place in the picture. In fact, there was no space on my canvas for any other world.

Today, the world for all of us is definitely smaller and a large majority of us folks know about what the culture is like in another part of the world. We can eat what someone eats in Paris while sitting in Mumbai and vice versa. We know what events happen even in the smallest of places somewhere else. This reduction of the world with people travelling and the arrival of the internet and social media has resulted in a beautiful mixing of cultures, languages and traditions.

 

On another note, people migrating to different places can also bring fascinating perspectives about culture & art. The shifting of physical residence can bring a sort of freedom and getting out of the box of the reputation & experience that one has created in one’s own country. Artist Audra Brazauskaite came to live in Mumbai in 2020. Since 2020, she has been able to concentrate on becoming an artist again. Before that, she lived in Vilnius, Lithuania and was spending most of her time as a lecturer of Art Therapy at the Vilnius University and working as an art therapist. I got to know her by chance and since I'm the curious sort, I contacted her to know more.

Audra was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, and had a good and peaceful childhood. She has a sister, 8 years older than her, and a brother, just a year younger. She says that even when she was little, her parents noticed that she loved to draw and paint, and gave her everything she needed to continue what later became her talent, passion, helped her to find a job and was an integral part of her well-being. People started responding to her art from kindergarten. She very quickly realized that if she drew well, she would get a reaction, and even a positive reaction from the adults around her. She started attending art school from the 5th grade. This art school, which is part of the education system, is a serious and well-established structure in Lithuania, guiding the student through a 4-year cycle. She continued art school until she finished compulsory secondary school and was able to enroll in the Vilnius Academy of Arts. It is understandable that after all these years, Audra always wanted to be just an “artist”. No other thought ever crossed her mind. She studied at the Vilnius Academy of Arts and began creating stage design for concerts and music festivals. However, she quickly realized that she preferred working alone to collaborating and leading people in a team.

Audra & her husband Sudipto Acharyya

I ask her how she became interested in drawing. Today, looking back, she realizes that perhaps because her little brother was just one year younger and naturally took all the attention away from her mother, she craved this attention. She saw that when she drew something, she got what she wanted from everyone, but most importantly, from her mother. Ultimately, an artist draws inspiration from the attention of the audience. Today, with her uniqueness and creativity, she feels the expectation of receiving appreciation from a curator or an art lover. This feeling of happiness is closely related to what she felt as a child, showing her painting to her parents.

Today, in her works of art, she uses the metaphors of knots, weaving and embroidery. She uses the word “today”, but says that this symbolism, interpretation or expression probably began a long time ago, when she was still a student. She remembers how she went through a difficult period in her youth and, being emotional, created art unconsciously or without any active thought process. these pieces were shown in a student exhibition and attracted interest. Since then, she has realized that the metaphors of weaving and knots are very important in her work.

Later, Audra obtained a doctorate in art therapy in her country, becoming a pioneer in this field. She was regularly invited to conferences to give presentations and lead art therapy workshops. After one conference, she was asked to write an article about her art therapy workshop on knots. In order to write relevant texts, Audra researched literature and related sources. She discovered that knots symbolize something very anthropological and ancient. She points out that even the Indian poet Kabir was a weaver. He wrote poems about weaving. Weaving symbolizes connection. This connection can be related to experiences and rituals.

 

Recently, Audra attended a Buddhist retreat at Dharamsala. In Buddhism, she says that knots represent a spiritual & emotional code. You can read more about this in these interesting links here

 https://portlandbuddhistpriory.org or about 

Endless knots on Wikipedia here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_knot

Audra today stitches on her canvas and as we discuss her migration and coming to settle in Mumbai after Covid, she finds this transition in her Art to stitching may symbolise correction & creation & recreation. I find this talk fascinating as when she speaks, I see how my own life played out. Having shifted to Europe more than twenty years ago and having lived a life of fusion, her words heightened my understanding of self and evolution using time as the canvas on which a unique ever ongoing masterpiece is being painted. So, I can hear about her travels & life changes and evolution and understand what she means by recreation and correction. We all finally are creating something and even if we don't move from one place to another, we create and correct and recreate through the many experiences life places on our paths.

Married to an Indian, Audra lives a unique life. She still teaches at the Vilnius University (thanks to remote working) and her generous management to allow her that. She then has time to create and finds that she creates much more now that she's settled in Mumbai. People back home haven't had time to see her be more than an Art Therapist or an Art Therapy teacher. She has found an audience in India comprising Indians, Americans and Lithuanians and thinks that her appeal is because she offers something new, original & different. For sure, it's tough to find your space in a foreign land but what she concentrates on is that she does what she loves and finally has time to do what she wanted to take time to do: create, paint and deepen her creativity.

Her move to India was unplanned and accelerated due to COVID, but since she has her husband and her art in India, she doesn’t feel really out of place. She has some qualms and feels challenged sometimes about not being able to communicate in Hindi. But living in this new culture and surrounded by new traditions has made her open her mind even more. It helped her become interested in Buddhist philosophy and psychology. As she reflects on her own experiences, she hopes to develop more skills and keep learning. 

I end my interview by asking her how she starts her work when faced with a blank, white canvas. Audra replies she draws on her intuition and starts with moving her gaze trusting the path it’ll take on this journey on the empty slate. There are a lot of studies on the Theory of gaze and neurosciences about what we see with not just our eyes. We're talking about what one's psyche sees. She follows her inner light and allows creation to happen, is how I understand it with my non painter brain. 

You can find a lot of information on Gaze on Wikipedia  related to several different topics and genres. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaze

Audra has already held an exhibition titled “I wave your name on the loom of my mind” last year at the prestigious Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai. Her upcoming exhibition is planned to be at Bajaj Art Gallery, in Mumbai from the 5th to 17th of October 2026.

Some photos from her past.

early days

dancing with her father at a wedding 

You can connect with Audra through her website or Instagram, see links

https://www.instagram.com/audr.aart?utm_source=qr&igsh=YzR4dnFkZ3l1aDR0

https://www.audraart.com/

https://www.singulart.com/en/artist/audra-brazauskaite-68773?show_popin=subscribe

#abstractart #audrabrazauskaite #artist #jehangirartgallery #arttherapy 

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