Day 243: When Moms Visit

When we used to be in university, the news of a friend's mom visiting from India used to create waves among the batch. I mean any friend's mom, not one particular friend's mom. Because when a mom visits, it means at least one great meal of delicious home cooked food! For people who have been living on canteen food, even though that too is good, it is still quite a pleasure to have "ghar ka khaana". In fact, more than the food, it's also the pampering. The mom would say "Beta... take one more roti..." or "....have some more sabji..." or "...one more gulab jamun? You haven't eaten anything at all!" (even though you might have had twice the amount of food you normally take. None does that at the canteen for sure. Hence, a mom's visit used to be a big deal.

There used to be a rather standard process during these times:
a) The friend announces the impending arrival of The Mom
b) Everyone gets excited
c) The Mom arrives
d) The date for the great dinner (or lunch) is fixed after the friend and The Mom figure out how to squeeze it in alongside the scheduled visits to Sentosa, Bird Park and the Zoo
e) Everyone waits anxiously for the big day
f) The big day arrives
g) Everyone gets ready in the best of clothes, because nobody obviously wants to look messy in front of The Mom.
h) All the girls even wear salwars (oh wait... that was only when my hubby's mom arrived. Then I wanted to make an impression of the perfect bahu in front of my future mother-in-law. So I got myself and the other girls in the batch to wear salwars because I didn't want to be the only girl in salwar. In hindsight, that's rather silly because then everyone looks perfect bahu types. Interesting. Anyways..)
i) Everyone gets on a bus, singing songs and making the same silly jokes about one person's crush or another person's haircut until we get to the place where The Mom resides (usually in the friend's relative's place).
j) Everyone says "Hello Aunty' or "Namaste Aunty" (haven't heard a third variation of this yet) when they meet The Mom
k) The Mom beams at the thought of having 15 cool-looking youngsters coming all the way from campus just to have her food
l) After the greetings and introductions that last for 5 minutes, the gang stands around politely for another 5 minutes until The Mom absolutely insists that we really must be starting on our dinner now.
m) The next 50 minutes is dedicated to finishing off every morsel of food that's been cooked.
n) Everyone burps
o) The Mom beams even more now, seeing how her hard work was worth it.
p) Everyone, including the boys, offer to do dishes. But somehow, it ends up with the girls doing it anyway while the boys pat their 3-inch-larger tummies and collapse on the sofa.
q) After a lot of inertia, everyone thanks The Mom one last time, and take another bus back to good old campus.

There. That used to be the routine. And the reason why I am talking about this now is because after a very long time (maybe more than 3-4 years even), I had a similar experience today. A friend's mom and dad are in town and we were invited for dinner. The gang, a lot smaller in number now, turned up to meet the parents over dinner. And it felt so good!

To be honest, I have been rather asocial over the last few years, hardly hanging out with friends. I am not sure why that has been the case but I think it is mainly because I get so little time to myself during the week, thanks to office, that I prefer to be on my own or just with 1-2 other people during my free time. This means I tend to avoid big gatherings of any kind because I get really uncomfortable. I was always an introvert and recently the tendency has been more so.

So when this friend's mom had visited a few years ago, I had not bothered to go and meet her. Which I kinda regret now because she is quite a darling. I really enjoyed meeting her today and it would have been a pleasure to know her even earlier. Well, lesson learnt.

So in short, I had a very nice evening. Good dinner. Lovely company. And some good memories.

757 more to go.