Me : “Ammi how do you temper your daal ( Lentil curry)? Ammi : “Temper it after its cooked”. Me : ” No wonder mine is not so tasty. ” Me : ” Ammi the tomato chutney you make has a peculiar flavour. Mine is not so. Ammi : “Did you add onion seeds?” Me: (slapping my head) ” No wonder I was not getting the crunch” Ammi : “Hey I love your yoghurt curry. How is it so colorful?” Me: ” ammi I learnt it from you and my variants are working well. I will tell you how. Ammi liked what I made and I loved her cooking. If I would give her a tip, she would never try it saying it will spoil her cooking. But if it was a new recipe, she would make it the way I would tell her and then say : ” tere jaisa nahin bana” ( it did not come out the way yours does). I would laugh and tell her. OK I will cook for you and my family, You cook for me ONLY.

Ammi: “How do you reply to whatsapp messages?” Me: ” Ammi here is the option. Just click here. This is for forwarding and this is for saving messages”. After a few days…… Ammi: “You are not telling me how to download videos. I have so much on my gallery. How do I remove them?” Me: ” Here ammi, I have deleted some of your photos and videos” Ammi (aghast): No please dont do that. I want to see each of them. Why did you delete. I may have missed something important” ME:” Ammi I deleted only those which you had double or more of. See everyone is sending you the same forward. Your mobile is saving it all in the gallery. So you have to at least remove the duplicates to make space in your mobile.” Ammi:” But you may have removed some of my good photos or forwarded messages. Me:” OK let me show you how to delete from your gallery directly and you should see your messages everyday. All are not important . They are jokes or fun shares. Ammi loved to store and save each and every little thing of hers. And eventually she thought of something more adventurous. She created a whatsapp group for the family. She made her grandson add all family members and then she would see messages, forward to us on that group and then delete them. Innovative right ? Well that was ammi. Living in the little things that gave her happiness in life. The fact that we all had to see her shared messages is a different story. We would sleep at night and by morning we had 150-200 messages from Ammi. ( She had finally deleted some from her bulk of 2000 plus) Ammi:” How do I download apps? Me: Which one do you want in particular? Ammi: ” Put the Scrabble app , Sudoku, TikTok, News apps.” Me: ” Ammi it will fill your space again. First delete all the extra things you have in your gallery. ( She would say she has no time but will do it) Me: Ammi let me do it for you. Ammi:” No, I might miss some important forwards. Back to square ONE Ammi:” yesterday I was showing your father some video. It was a nice one on some poets. God knows what he touched? He has deleted most of my messages. ” Me ( laughing”: Ammi if you dont know what is deleted, you dont know what you had. So just let it be. If it is important , you will get it again. And of course your friends will definitely send you more. See them and enjoy. That was my Ammi always fearing for losing something she did not know she had or did not have!!!

When my parents shifted recently into a bigger house, I used to be there each morning to help her sort all those cartons. Ammi:” ” I have so much saved here , I should start discarding and throwing away the non-essentials”. Me: ” lets start with these Audio cassettes which are no longer needed (about 10000 of them). Its the age of USB and CDS. Ammi : ” No, I will listen to them and see which I dont need.” ME: (chuckling) ” How would you find the time? Ammi: ” Every night if I hear one, I will be able to discard soon”. Me: ” What about these files? These are emails sent to you 20 years back. they are useless jokes, religious forwards which you have and these box files are occupying so much space.” Ammi: ” No, please keep them. I will check each and every one and then only throw.” Me: ” Ammi these are old shawls from 30 years back”. Let us give some away. Ammi: ” Yes when I go to India I will give them to the poor.” Me: ” All these things you are going to organize and put into these cupboards, then what will you discard? ” You need to declutter. Its a nice way of bringing positive energy in the house and throwing away the negative one…………………………” Ammi : ” No, now your father is much better. I will try and sort things out”

Ammi loved to save, store and keep things of really non-essential value. It made her think they are important. We used to make fun of that but now realize why she held on to them. They reminded her of her years passed, her saving things was like a hold on. She passed away exactly 4 months after they shifted. All her memorabilia is still lying around. I dont have the heart to throw anything now. She did not take a thing with her. She left all these and more memories with us here. Even a piece of her handwriting is of essential value for us now. Even a scrap where she may have written a note…..a tiny picture torn at the edges is important……her saris which she had from more than 20 years smell of her…..her side of the bed where I found her most evenings is a place I like to touch….her cushion which I gifted her ” World’s Best Mom” emanates her presence……her pictures seem vivid and live speaking to me, calling my name……How can we dispose anything now? People just go away but their things and memories stay etched and remind us of them daily…… People say I have her smile, her voice, her shadow in me……..I also save just like her. ( Thinking I will throw the non-essentials one day……but everything seems important) Of course, I do my cluttering but I still keep a lot…..I am just like my mom. My Vitamin M…..She is the only essential factor in our lives