Tea, Twinning and Tenacity

Lil Miss has often been called my spitting image. She takes it well, for now. Each time someone calls her Lil Khushboo, she beams with pride. I know there will come a time when she will snap at anyone who calls her a carbon copy of anyone else, least of all her mother. She will want to be known as the individual she is. And I am okay with that. For the time being.




I do not think my daughter is my copy, in any way. The eyes, the smile, the nose- maybe. But the self-assuredness? No. This young woman knows her mind; and does not shy away from speaking it. She does not second-guess herself. If anything, I am like her, at this age. But as a six-year old plump girl with her nose buried in books (textbooks on the outside, storybooks on the inside, both literally and metaphorically)- No. She is nothing like I was. Perhaps I could take a wee bit of credit for it. But the tenacity with which she defends her choices- Na, na! Not my doing.




I might have imbibed it from her, though. In fact, we seem to be practicing this skill with increasing frequency (read, we are fighting daily!). But Lil Miss insists we are the same! Mumma-Baby same- same- she coos, over some cute video of a mother koala bear hugging her baby. Sure, all koalas look the same. But me? I don't look like myself on most days!




There was a time when she insisted we wear the same colour. Every. Single. Day. She would not let me step out of home in anything other than the dress code, even when I went to work. We had Moony blue Mondays, and Gossamer green Tuesdays. The problem started after that. Lil Miss chose an orange outfit for every remaining day of the week. Warring Wednesdays, Tumultuous Thursdays, Ferocious Fridays and Simmering Saturdays. She could have continued for another week and not have had to repeat an outfit. Meanwhile, I was washing my orange kurta each evening, and wearing it to work the next day. By Saturday, it was a battered butterscotch colour- almost an albino version of itself from a week before.




If you were going to suggest I should not have obliged Lil Miss and her fancies, take a look at the kind of arguments she put up in favour of ‘twinning outfits’.

1. It is easier to match mother and kid in case we get lost in a crowded mall. (We were lounging at home that day, FYI). I argue that we look like carbon copies. She counterargues, we look very different ‘from behind'.
2. I would not have to worry about choosing what to wear each day.
3. My underutilized outfits (Which I forget wearing, she has oft heard me complain,) would see the light of day.
4. I would be tempted to lose weight. (She left this argument open-ended, and I cannot stop marvelling at her genius roundabout way of telling me I don’t fit into most of them.) This was for Magenta- the kid is now into complicated fancy colour names, and there is no end to my (Oxford) blues.
5. She could teach me names of new colour shades each day, and wearing it would be my ‘practical’ project. Here she wags her finger, like I do. I roll my eyes, like she does.
6. I don’t remember. Or care. I’ve surrendered already, to the Goddess of Tenacity.

I pick my cup of tea and shrug. I take a sip, and whisper a silent thanks to the inventor of ginger tea. I am sure it must be an exasperated mother.




And I realize, mothers have a unique bond with tea. The cuppa is like a port-key that transports them to the land of solutions. The land of creative hacks for mundane troubles. The land of vast stores of patience. And most importantly, the land where she can take hasty gulps of the qualities life demands of her in enormous measure- authori-tea, flexibili-tea, and of course, tenaci-tea!