Whose life is it anyway?

Whom does one's life belong to? To self? If you think you own your life, think again.
When a child, mere some days old, smiles, who takes pride in it?
When a child starts babbling, who goes ga-ga over it?
When a child starts standing and walking who goes crazy over it?
When a kid starts for school, who drives all others crazy over how the kid scribbles something that in an abstract art form looks like an alphabet?
If a person is x, x's life is owned by x's mom.
x can also be a mom herself. Still x's life will be owned by x's mom.
If x is a male, whatever the age is, this theory holds good.
If x is married x's ownership, at times, is transferred to x's wife. But not always.
Bachelor xes sometimes blog about it, still owned by their moms however.

The typical mom has an obsessive pride and possessiveness in her creation.
My mom has evangelized ad infinitum about my brilliance and genius, eventhough in my one score and some (that's some some! ) years, I've never exhibited even a modicum of proof of that. She is an one woman church spreading her word (ofcourse no believers!) about how brilliant her son is.

She never even allowed her son to ride as much as a bicycle on the highway, fearing that her precious gem would be lost in an acccident. Ofcourse even motor cycle accidents went unreported. Chennai's Mount road aka Anna Salai has seen me up close, countless times. Quite dashing was I. :-)

Men can never feel that way about their offspring, I think. The closest a male comes to experience that feeling would be when he customizes his bike/car. Yeah, I'm possessive about my motorcycle still, eventhough someone is driving it now! :-(

Coming back to moms and stuff, I thought by now, my mom would've relinquished her feeling of ownership. I recently discovered I was wrong.

When a friend of mine went back for a visit to India, I gave him a DVD of me skydiving, to scare my mom. I half-expected a call from my mom berating me for risking the handsome life she gave me. That kind of call never came. I forgot about that. On this Deepavali, I called up every friend and relative I could reach, to wish them. Every single one of them mentioned about seeing the DVD! To my horror, I came to know that it was even lent to people who could not come to our place! Continous shows of me skydiving is on, courtesy my mom advertising my "daring" to all who care and a few who do not. I guess she is hardpressed for my achievements.

- Written by a dumbass son who is not with his mom on her 60th birthday. 60 years of weathering countless severe storms and still steady. Wishing the mother ship countless number of smooth years in future before riding onto the sunset.