Memories of mother like the melodies she played will always linger

This is my homage to the memory of my mother, Celeste Anandappa who departed this life two years ago on July 9. Married to Clarence Joseph Anandappa in 1948, Celeste bore 11 children (one died young), the first born in 1949 and the youngest in 1970. My father, a journalist, hailed from a rather affluent background but strangely inherited nothing. By the early 1950’s with the family growing, father and mother had moved from Colombo to Kandana - the latter was to remain the family abode for nearly four more decades.

Recollecting my childhood and boyhood days - living on rent, life was nomadic and never a bed of roses with an ever-growing family. While Father seemed eternally busy at work, Mother was the centre of our world and the livewire of the family. I think we still grew up happily like any other children blissfully ignorant of the harsher realities of life. Mother was there for us all the time to protect us and to love us and, we possibly never felt insecure or denied for this reason.

Mother was helped by Maggie, an orphan a few years her junior, who from her early teens had been in my maternal grandmother’s household. She eventually became a family member and outlived Mother.

Mother was an exceptionally gifted pianist and possibly sacrificed a career in music or as a concert pianist to raise ten children. Father had stopped her from continuing with her music as soon as the two were betrothed or married. Mother never complained to us when we were young, but about an year or two before her death, she spoke of it - it showed how much music meant to her even late in her life.

Even a few months prior to her death she could play her favourite short classical and light classical pieces beautifully without dropping a single note on the piano-the delicacy of her play always capable of bringing a tear or two to your eye. She also had a very, very good voice.

In addition to her unshaken love for my father, her children, her family and later the grandchildren, I think what kept her going was her love for music which was like an unfulfilled dream or a beacon in her life. Amidst all those domestic chores, she would sit and play the piano on evenings often singing beautifully and we would listen with delight as children. Neighbours would come to listen to her. At Christmas, after we the children, had returned from the compulsory mid-night mass, mother would sit at the piano to sing and play carols. She would soon be joined by father who also had a very good baritone voice. These sessions would end up with mother and father singing some of those evergreen light classics such as “Whispering Hope” as duets with mother never failing in her piano accompaniment. This is one of the fondest memories of my teens.

Among my memories is the picture of mother walking along Station Road carrying the latest addition to the family, my newborn youngest sister close to her to protect the baby against the midmorning sun. I, as a 15-year-old with two other siblings even younger trailed behind. The bullock carts had already left with the goods and we had set off on foot from Hapugoda to our new abode in Nagoda. The roads hardly had any traffic then. It was an exciting excursion and a diversion for us. Mother was stopped somewhere near the railway station by a lady she knew, who asked mother in Sinhalese rather impishly, to my annoyance, “Oh yet another one for you?” I can recall the blissful smile that lit mother’s face when she almost instantly said “Yes” and allowed the lady to have a look at the baby.

Mother was totally disinterested in accumulating material wealth or money and was willing to share whatever little she had with the needy. My father who predeceased mother (in 2001) too had a similar outlook on life.

Going back to the early sixties again when I was about twelve or thirteen, a playmate of ours, several years my senior whose father had died suddenly rendering a family of six young children and widow penniless, appeared at home around 7 o’clock in the evening on an errand for his mother desperately wanting milk for his infant sister. Mother readily parted with a portion of the milk powder intended for my own infant sister who was of the same age. I am sure she did this many times. Years later this person reminisced that having been flatly refused help from his landlord possibly the richest man in Kandana then, my father had also taken him to the grocery shop and bought a tin of milk for his infant sister in spite of our own grave difficulties. With eight mouths to feed and father’s sole meagre income, we were well and truly struggling then. There was only so little at home to be given away.

Mother faced her trials and tribulations with infinite grace and grit and hardly ever complained. She also had an enormous capacity to sacrifice for her children. She never advocated about saving or earning money nor asked for any material comfort. It looked as if she was immune to material wealth. Her spirit of helping the needy stayed with her until her death. Anyone looking destitute appearing at her door was always treated with respect and kindness, an unfailing quality that I also saw in my father.

Mother taught the value of sharing and caring by example even under trying conditions. No religion or book can teach you better. Love for classical music is another thing I learned from mother at a young age. Those haunting melodies mother played lovingly and so delicately on the piano to comfort us and possibly her own self were like the testimony of her own life. This is the memory of my beautiful mother that I cherish most and find equally painful.

In that shade under a bough and a cross Mother now rests in eternal peace. No flower that nature will cause to bloom over her grave will be sweeter or fragrant as her memory.