I still remember the day my mother, who gave birth to eight children in total, brought one of my younger brothers into this world.

As usual, on the windy morning, she was sweeping the patio after preparing and serving breakfast to the father and his five children. Heaping the withered leaves and twigs that she had swept from the patio under the huge tamarind tree, she panted for a while. As if he suddenly remembered an important appointment, he hurriedly collected the garbage in a wicker tray and emptied it into the waste pit before springing into action.

She quickly changed into an old sari, settled the dispute between two of her children and my older brothers before sending them off to school, and waited for the midwife, who delivered most of the local children, including two of her own. sons. me included, before. This was how most mothers gave birth to their babies even in the suburbs of the city in those days, without any fuss or attention.

About a week after giving birth to a child, the mother would return to her normal self. Sometimes Grandma was close to her, offering her a helping hand and telling us bedtime stories. In due time, the new member of the family would become the center of everyone’s attention and thus we all shared in the mother’s obligation to care for the baby.

The mother could be a great inspiration for modern home robot designers. I have never seen my mother lying in bed sleeping or sick on those days. Her typical day began with caring for the birds, clucking in the wooden cage, early in the morning. She would have completed a variety of tasks before a second of the household, including the father, got out of bed, which would be a nightmare for most house help today. She freed the birds from the stinking cage and fed them, cleaned the barn, filled the manger with rice straw, and milked the animal before sizing the logs of firewood and lighting the fireplace for breakfast.

His morning routine in the kitchen, such as grating coconut or grinding coconut with green chilli in the stone mallet to make a delicious chutney for breakfast, woke the children up one by one. Some time later, between helping the little ones to bathe and get dressed, she served breakfast to everyone and in a while the children joined the children of the neighborhood to take a walk to the nearby school.

After exchanging morning jokes with the neighbors while cleaning utensils and washing clothes by the well, she would start preparing the afternoon meal for the children. She sampled a variety of curries every day by varying the combination of spices in her wooden spice box before grinding them finely in the stone mortar. The mother had not heard of the ready-to-use masala mix available in the market nor had she used powdered spices to prepare the food. In the middle, some woman from the neighborhood appeared to share a gossip or an event that had happened or was about to happen in the surroundings that would give her the emotion of watching a modern soap opera.

At lunchtime, while patiently listening to the events of the morning at the children’s school, she served them hot food. And after the children returned to school after eating their mother’s delicious food, she might appear for a while in the yard to argue with the women of the neighborhood, who by then would have gathered under the neem tree at the across the street.

Topics ranging from recipes, movies, politics, and newspaper stories would be covered, plus, of course, more gossip. Instead of taking an afternoon nap, her mother believed that mind sharing and talking with the women in her neighborhood would keep her informed of things going on around her.

Also, in the days when wet grinders and mixers were unknown, the mother prepared the mixture of dosa and iddli in the hand grinder, turning the stone endlessly, turning towards the hole through the center of the circular stone while listening Movie songs on Ceylon radio. . She sometimes pounded uncooked rice and toasted the flour in a wide earthenware dish and stored the powder to make kozha puttu, a favorite breakfast delicacy for most of us. On vacation, the mother would try different tasks, such as parboiling the rice in the huge bronze pot, stacking the rice straw, cleaning the house, and even gathering grass from the nearby land for the cow.
Mother made the best bites of the night in town. Her murukku, her adirasam and paniyaram, stored in huge biscuit tins during the Deepavali season, are delicious even now.

The mother knew almost everyone in the locality, including her status, through frequent meetings with the women under the neem tree in the evenings. Her knowledge of the world would also challenge that of any modern housewife.

In the midst of all her household chores, the mother, like most women in the barrios, had time to watch movies from time to time in the town theaters and shop in the town markets. She was known in the neighborhoods for her negotiating tactics. She also regularly attended our school day functions.

The mother believed in leading a life of coexistence with her neighbors. She left the poultry and dairy animals in the care of neighbors while she visited Grandma or other relatives with the family for a few days. Similarly, she would happily take care of others’ birds and animals when they were away from her. For the most part, we went together as a family to weddings and other neighborhood functions.

Gone are the days of such humble and efficient cleaning. One could imagine the treatment housewives of today receive from other family members the moment they are confirmed to be pregnant.

And what happens when the children are ready to go to school? Many houses are turned upside down when the school bus doesn’t show up one morning. How many mothers residing in the midst of the chaos of city life today know the names of their neighbors, let alone each other?

Also, mothers today are mostly slaves to the new gadgets in their kitchens and elsewhere. Power outages, the absence of domestic workers or the day-to-day life of schoolchildren, which people like my mother barely controlled then, have a high incidence in the day-to-day life of housewives today.

Nowadays, housewives in urbanized and even semi-urbanized areas barely have time to talk constructively with other family members. They seem to empathize with imaginary characters from soap operas than with living characters that live around them. They also prefer to talk to unseen faces on mobile phones for hours rather than spending a few minutes talking to other residents.

My mother’s tribe is today in danger of extinction. The mothers of the current generation are lucky if they have a grandmother at home remembering and reminding the mothers of the current generation of practices and wisdom of yore from time to time.

About a week after giving birth to a child, the mother would return to her normal self. Sometimes Grandma was close to her, offering her a helping hand and telling us bedtime stories. In due time, the new member of the family would become the center of everyone’s attention and thus we all shared in the mother’s obligation to care for the baby.

The mother could be a great inspiration for modern home robot designers. I have never seen my mother lying in bed sleeping or sick on those days. Her typical day began with caring for the birds, clucking in the wooden cage, early in the morning. She would have completed a variety of tasks before a second of the household, including the father, got out of bed, which would be a nightmare for most house help today.

After exchanging morning jokes with the neighbors while cleaning utensils and washing clothes by the well, she would start preparing the afternoon meal for the children. She sampled a variety of curries every day by varying the combination of spices in her wooden spice box before grinding them finely in the stone mortar. The mother had not heard of the ready-to-use masala mix available in the market nor had she used powdered spices to prepare the food. In the middle, some woman from the neighborhood appeared to share a gossip or an event that had happened or was about to happen in the surroundings that would give her the emotion of watching a modern soap opera.

Also, in the days when wet grinders and mixers were unknown, the mother prepared the mixture of dosa and iddli in the hand grinder, turning the stone endlessly, turning towards the hole through the center of the circular stone while listening Movie songs on Ceylon radio. .