THEY ARE CREATURES LIKE US, WHETHER WE AGREE OR NOT
M y mom, who is 83, lives with my elder brother’s family in our native place, Mangalore. That’s the place where she is very, very comfortable… That’s the place she built from the scratch… That’s the place she lived with her husband, in-laws and all her five sons… That’s the place she feels deeply connected to, and, yes, that’s the place where she wants to spend her last years, too. I and my youngest brother, Vivek, have settled, here, in Mumbai. Rony, my fourth brother, has settled in Kuwait. A couple of times, when mom was more energetic, she had come over to our places and stayed with us for a few weeks. But, despite our ‘royal treatment’, she never felt she belonged here… She hated the idea of being confined within the four walls of these Mumbai houses – the ‘match boxes’. She couldn’t communicate in languages other than Konkani, Kannada and Tulu; and, here, she would never feel at ease meeting people who did not speak those languages. So, these days, she i...