A Lesson in Silence.

Amma... That is what I call my mother. Amma and I were never the best of friends. And I can't blame her. I was more of a tomboy all my growing years. I know I've never appreciated her enough, but I know how hard it was for her to be a full-time working mother of three children, not to mention the extreme pressures she faced as an expatriate working in a foreign ministry hospital. All the hard work took a toll on her health, but never once have I heard her complain or fail in her duties as a wife or mother.

Never of a very strong constitution, Amma was diagnosed with cancer in the uterus when I was doing my third year in engineering. The surgery left her physically weak and emotionally drained. But of the little I know of my mother, I knew she was not the type to give up. She rejoined work after the surgery.

Several months after the surgery, she came back for a medical check up. She was still tired and weak but she went around with same vigour that I'd seen in my childhood days.

One morning we decided to 'pay a visit to the green grocer's'. We were laden with fruits and vegetables at the end of our shopping and we boarded a bus to get back home. We were lucky to get seats in a bus that got crowded within the next two stops.

For people who have travelled in the buses here, they know how difficult it is for the able bodied to get a hold while the bus is moving, let alone the old and the weak. The whole thing becomes an infernal hell when it starts getting crowded too.

The bus stopped to let in an old lady, bent with age. She hardly had all her body parts in the bus, before it started moving. However she caught herself before she fell. Age is never a matter in a crowded bus and no one offered a seat to the old lady.

I had neither seen the old lady nor her plight. But my mother noticed. She gave me her packet of vegetables and without a word to me, before I could understand what she was doing, she got up from her seat, offered it the old lady and moved into the crushing crowd.

Being the impulsive person I am, I'd worked myself up into a rage by the time we got out. I reminded her that she was physically very weak and that she could've simply asked me to offer my seat. All I got in reply was her smile.

The incident for no reason remained in memory. And now when I think about it, I can understand what she intended by her actions. If she had told me to move, I would've done it. But on another occasion, where it would be my decision to move or not to, I might opt for the comfort of my seat.

But in her silent way, she taught me to share what little we have to make a better world. She had a little good health left with her. That she offered whole heartedly to someone who was even more weak than her.

On that day she taught me a simple lesson with no words at all. A lesson that will forever remain etched in my memory.