I will never forget my mother’s smile and her teaching us the Rosary
Elizabeth Indrani Amirthanayagam was born on November 5, 1936. She shared that birthday with my son and her grandson Anandan.
My father Guy, her husband, would address her as Indrani. My daughter Lola Indrani Rebecca carries Indrani as her middle name, just as her grandmother did in life.
I loved my mother. We all did. And each of us loved her in our own, particular ways. But each child and grandchild, brother and sister, share one absolute delight: the patties she made from scratch and filled with a mix of spiced meat and onions.
And patties were just the beginning. She made hoppers, plain and egg. She steamed pittu and ladled string hoppers. She made curries of all sorts. And she invented her famous ‘’Bird,” quail roasted in her own blend of spices.
My mother became a great cook once we left Ceylon for England and later Honolulu and Rockville. And she served everyone. So many have written to me in these days about her food and the generous amounts.
My mother took amazing care of my autistic brother Revantha. After my father died in 2003, the two of them lived by themselves at our home in Rockville until 2016. My mother got Revantha up and washed and fed him every morning, and on to the exercise bike and then off to his day programme. She would then greet him in the afternoon and make sure he was content with a meal and a movie. And she would attend to his bath. She attended to his every need.
Revantha had suffered meningitis as a child. That illness could have sparked his autism. My brother used to speak and he would go to school. After his autism set in he stopped speaking. And to this day he only uses some simple sounds and gestures to communicate.
If not for my brother, and the difficult situation of the Tamils, we would not have moved away from Ceylon, first to the United Kingdom and later to Hawaii and Maryland in the United States.
My mother was a devout Catholic. She prayed every day and she attended mass daily. She tithed and gave a lot of her disposable income to the church and to charity.
My mother loved to dance in her youth. And she was very studious and well behaved at school at St. Bridget’s in Colombo—so well behaved that the teachers refused to believe that she could have participated in a prank with her classmates—a prank that involved making fun of her teacher’s teaching on the blackboard.
My mother was very intelligent and had an acute political sense and was a lifelong defender of the defenceless, a democrat.
She voted against tyranny in the 2020 election. She supported the rights of her people, the minority Tamils in Sri Lanka.
My mother achieved high marks for her A levels but she was not allowed to go to university. She was to be married instead. And she spent a year and a half helping her parents at home while her friends studied at university. She regretted not having had that chance to study. And she took great pride in the achievements of her children and grandchildren. Just a week or two ago she asked my daughter about her plans to visit colleges, what she wished to pursue. Lola answered that she wanted to become a photographer. My mother smiled.
I will never forget my mother’s smile and her teaching us the Rosary growing up. We said the Rosary together every evening, for many years. The prayers console and heal now in memory.
I will never forget her sad eyes as I left home for the first time at 17, to leave Honolulu and fly to distant Philadelphia on the East Coast. I could not afford to return home for two Christmases in a row. My mother I learned now from my sister was terribly cut up about that. She wanted her family together.
I will never forget her quiet dignity - despite two strokes, despite the contractions and her inability to sit, stand and walk; despite an existence of lying in bed except when she was picked up and put in a wheelchair.
She managed to participate in the activities of the home where she spent her last months. Dressed and helped into the wheelchair, she is seen in memory tapping her feet to the music.