My Mother Thinks I Am a Cow

My mother arrived a few days before the birth. By the time we were home with the baby, her voice was already grating on me. I tried to nap on the living room couch, but the baby’s colicky shrieks kept me in a wakeful limbo. Mummy walked her up and down, cooing in a singsong voice that only made it worse.

‘Why is she still crying?’ Mummy asked, the baby tucked in the crook of her arm.

Harshvir chimed in, ‘It’s okay, Ma. I’ll take her outside for a bit.’ He didn’t know what to do with either of us, so he mostly tried to help with the baby.

‘No. She just had a bath. And it’s too cold.’

It was summer in Vancouver, but for my mother it was always too cold. She continued her pacing, rocking the baby with vigour. I should have been grateful for her help; instead, I felt cornered.

The pain of labour had exhausted me in a way that felt permanent. My body responded strangely for weeks. I smelled awful. I had sent Harshvir out to buy different kinds of deodorants, but nothing worked. My nipples cracked and bled. I felt leaden, like metal melting in a lopsided way. Maybe this is how the earth felt – calloused and cracked on the surface, with a boiling molten centre. Yet, my mother and Harshvir looked at me like I was the same person.

After a decade apart, my mother and I were under the same roof again. I was unused to the brisk rhythm of her routine. Early in the morning, I saw the lights turn on and heard her in the kitchen. She brewed strong tea with leaves she had brought and complained that the ginger from the supermarket had no taste.

Mummy took care of the tasks I found tiresome – sterilising bottles, washing dishes, and folding all the tiny clothes. Initially I had resisted letting her take over our home. But Harshvir reminded me that she was here to help. After lunch, we sat in the living room, sipping hot tea. The baby had fallen asleep on my lap. I watched her like you would watch an interesting stranger on the train.

‘Ee onji pettha.’ In Tulu, my mother’s language, that means you are a cow.

‘What?’

‘You’ve become like a cow. So calm. Just sitting all day with her. You used to be so busy, doing this and that. Only work, work, work. Now you are a mother.’ She said the last line with certainty, as if its meaning was self-evident.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You are like a cow. So calm and patient. That’s how a mother should be.’

The words curdled in my mind. Stupid as a cow. Stubborn as a cow. Stagnant. Sacrificial.

‘Honestly, I don’t think that’s a compliment,’ I said, in English. Tulu was my mother tongue, but I rarely spoke it. Growing up in Bombay, a city of a hundred languages, the only people who spoke Tulu were the ones I didn’t want to speak to – my mother and her sisters.

‘I think so. Cows are like God. What do you know?’

She could see the comment had rubbed me the wrong way, but she didn’t elaborate. Mummy grew up in a village near Udupi, where cows held a different meaning. In houses that could afford them, they were not just animals, but kin. I didn’t see the world the way she did.

The thought that I was a cow echoed for the rest of the day. My body had grown bovine. The baby looked so small beside me, like a calf tucked against its mother.

Later, when Mummy was asleep, I told Harshvir what she had said. ‘My mother thinks I’m a cow.’

‘She said that? Like, literally?’

‘She didn’t call me a cow. She thinks I’m like a cow. You know, how they take care of their calves … they’re maternal, calm.’

‘I guess that’s true. You are maternal. I mean, you’re a mom.’

I ignored this and continued, though I knew I sounded prickly. ‘She also said that cows are sacred, as if that’s a compliment.’

‘Maybe it is? She probably meant it in a nice way. You know, when you told me your mom was going to stay for a few months, I was worried. But it’s actually gone much better than I expected.’

It was easy for him to take her side. Harshvir was always polite to my mother, verging on deferential. They had met for the first time at our wedding, and he couldn’t parse the tension between us, didn’t understand that there was always a silent war going on. He thought things were going well. I recognised the old pattern: seeing myself the way she saw me.

My mother’s life, while braided into mine, remained a distinct thread. It began after Daddy died. Mummy stopped speaking – not just to me, but to everyone. When relatives visited, they would ask, ‘How is your mother today?’ I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. Silence built on silence; absences, hers and mine, compounded until we found that we didn’t need each other.

In practice, we did need to communicate. She would leave things on the table for me to find – packed lunches, a prescription that needed filling, spare keys. I would route instructions through my aunts – my college fees had to be paid, the maid was on leave.

Even now, our conversations revolved around necessities. But the baby had brought out something new. Mummy looked at me with a fondness I hadn’t seen in years, maybe even pride. Perhaps she hadn’t expected me to ever go through childbirth, especially in another country. She was quietly astonished by the inconveniences – no maid, no corner store deliveries, no neighbours offering help. Still, she kept telling me how lucky I was.

‘You’re lucky,’ she said. ‘You look so happy. I was never allowed to rest. My mother-in-law tortured me. I had to get painful massages, take hot baths. She didn’t let me eat enough. But I had to cook and clean for everyone in the house because she had arthritis.’

Was she angry with me for being able to rest? Or was she telling me this so I could understand her better? I tried to picture my mother’s postpartum life, but I couldn’t see myself there. Had she looked at me the way I looked at my baby?

The days blurred. Feedings, naps, diapers. And a slow recognition that the kind of love borne out of suffering was profound. But the same thought recurred: is this how Mummy felt about me? The baby slept on me, her body like a weighted blanket across my chest, her soft curls tucked at my neck. I lay her down in the crib and watched the small lump of her silhouette under the nightlight, afraid she might wake up and cry again.

How could I be scared of my own baby? Why didn’t I know what to do? Cow mothers knew what to do. So did koala mothers, beetle mothers. I thought of the first time the nurse placed her on me, seconds after she was born. She knew what to do.

I picked up her blanket and held it to my face, breathing it in to calm down. I stood and poked at my stomach. My insides were still rearranging themselves, trying to come back together.

That night, when the baby’s screams had gone on for over an hour, and nothing would work, I told Mummy to put her down in the crib for five minutes and let her cry. She refused.

‘It’s gas,’ she said, ‘because of what you’re eating. You should stop eating meat. And potatoes, cauliflower, dal.’

That was everything Harshvir knew how to cook.

‘I can’t, Mummy. That’s all we eat. And the paediatrician said it doesn’t even matter.’

She didn’t reply. She just stormed off with the baby into her room.

Why wouldn’t she cook? She was clearly the better cook. Harshvir had taken over the kitchen when I got pregnant, but he only knew four meals, and we rotated through them endlessly. He apologised for the burnt rice and watery dal, but we didn’t change the arrangement.

The next day, Chelsea came over for dinner to meet the baby. As we set the table, Mummy filled the silence with her usual gripes: ‘I was so worried when you left. How will you manage? You can’t cook. You can’t clean. But you want to run away to another country to work. Thank God at least you got married.’

It bothered me that she might say something like this around Chelsea, but she had a different public persona. When I told her my colleague was coming, she was full of enthusiasm to cook, to host. She spent the day preparing, insisting that Harshvir buy fresh coconut and curry leaves from the Indian store.

‘For you I’ve made Kavya’s favourite,’ Mummy said to Chelsea, sliding the bowl towards her, ‘Chicken sukka.’

I hadn’t eaten sukka in years. I wished it hadn’t taken a guest for her to make it.

Chelsea smiled and ate. Later she said, ‘Your mom is so hospitable. I really admire how Indian families take care of each other.’

My face settled into something static. I nodded, unable to explain how my mother’s presence had frayed me, how help always came at a cost.

She went on. ‘You know, it’s like everyone says, it’s so important to have a village.’

Having grown up in a village, my mother wouldn’t know what Chelsea meant. To her, a village meant hardship. No money, no hospitals, no choices. We moved to Bombay when I was one and after Daddy died, it was just Mummy and me. And most days it felt like it wasn’t even that.

After dinner, we sat in the living room drinking tea. The presence of a guest made the room feel formal. Mummy had vacuumed, changed the cushions, set out coasters. Chelsea asked about the beach. We’d taken Mummy and the baby earlier that week. The sky stretched like a pale blue dome, reminding me of the expansiveness I first felt when I moved to Vancouver.

‘She didn’t like it,’ I said.

‘Oh, why not?’ Chelsea seemed surprised. ‘It’s so gorgeous out there.’

Mummy shook her head, ‘That’s not a beach. The waves don’t even move. It’s like a big lake.’

‘She’s used to the beaches in Udupi,’ I explained. ‘It’s hot. The waves actually crash, and you get drenched. Eat boiled peanuts. There are fairs on the sand. Stray dogs and goats. Cows.’

‘Cows?’ Chelsea laughed.

‘Everything,’ I said.

‘Here, it’s too cold. And too quiet. No one even goes in the water.’ She didn’t say it, but it was clear that she missed home.

‘Still, it must be wonderful to be around the baby. And your daughter.’

Mummy nodded slowly. ‘Yes. Lucky,’ she said.

I nodded too, though I wasn’t sure which one of us she meant.

Over the months, the lava beneath the surface didn’t erupt. Instead, it shifted and hardened, settling into landscapes that I barely recognised. Mummy’s visit left a patina on our lives. I was relieved she would leave, until her final day, when I grew distant and irritable. I wanted her to offer to stay longer, even just so I could refuse.

That night, I promised my sleeping daughter that I would never call her a cow, no matter what it meant. I promised her that I would always choose my words with care. I promised to love her perfectly, knowing already that I wouldn’t. But maybe she could be the thread that might still tie us together.

We dropped Mummy off at the airport past midnight. Harshvir held the baby, and I walked her up to the security gate. I handed over her suitcase. We hugged. I waited for her to say something. I couldn’t tell if she could see me tearing up. My voice had a jagged edge as I spoke.

‘How will I know what to do?’ All of a sudden, I was a child again.

‘You will know,’ she said. And for the first time I took her word for it.