( Avtar Mota and his sister with their mother)
THE STITCHING NEEDLE OF MY MOTHER
I had only two white shirts for my school uniform. After i hit my head against the railing of the Jogilanker bridge, one of my white shirts was torn. I was left with one shirt only. Thereafter , everyday ,she would wash and iron this lone shirt after i returned from the school . Never did I feel that I had only one shirt. She had learnt tailoring as well at her parental home . Every month she asked my father to bring her a sewing machine. It was beyond his means.
And then she bought a piece of white poplin cloth from Malik cloth shop near Jogilanker bridge. This type of credit was repaid by her from the meagre monthly household expenditure .
And one night, I saw her stitching a white shirt for me with needle and thread. She had carefully cut the white Poplin cloth to make a shirt out of it.
Next day , she gave me a new hand stitched shirt for my uniform . For many days ,as she served us food, I saw her three bruised finger tips .She had injured them with pricks that the stitching needle gave her. A time arrived in my life when many such debts could be repaid to her but she was nowhere around. She had left this world .To this day, the stitching needle that she used for stitching my shirt, remains somewhere deep within my heart unable to stitch any wound .
(Avtar Mota)
CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.
