“I can’t eat anything that has a mother” – Fred Rogers(1928-2003), of “Mister Rogers’ neighborhood”, on being asked by a reporter why he chose to be a vegetarian.

If you are a married Bengali man, around the middle of every June is an event called “Jamai Shashti”, the day when sons-in-law are feted and feasted. You get invited to your in-laws’ and they mollycoddle you and stuff you with sweetmeats and you come back home loaded with presents.

In a horrendously patriarchal society, the Jamai (Bengali for ‘son-in-law’) is like God on earth. For those who aren’t aware, Bengal is an eastern province of India that borders Bangladesh.

With me, Jamai Shashti has always been different. If I said anything about Jamai Shashti to my mum-in-law, she wouldn’t know what the hell I was talking about. She was Iranian, a dear woman who brought up a small army, five kids, one of whom was lassoed and reeled in by this Bengali cowboy – yours truly. At the time of writing this, she remains lassoed proper.

On WhatsApp, weekends, my mum-in-law chattered away, bubbling with news and repeatedly asking after my welfare.

“Salaam, jan!! Holé shomo khubé?” (Hello dear, how are you?).

“Mèrci, mamanjan, man khubam. Shomo khubee? Aghajan khubé?” (Thank you, Maman, I’m fine. How are you and father?)

That’s where my Farsi began showing cracks in its foundations and while Maman chattered on, I looked around helplessly for Farah and waited for her to come over and translate. While I was waiting, I caught some familiar snatches like ‘love you very much’, ‘waiting to see you in Iran’, ‘look after your health’, ‘don’t work too hard’. It’s the sort of universal thing that parents say to you.

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After our son was born back in 2000, Maman came over to India to lend a hand. She stayed a month and we have no idea what we would have done without her.

All the while that she was there, my Maman never once asked to be taken out sight seeing, go shopping or anything else. Neither did I make an effort to spend time with her, find out if she needed anything. It was as if spending thousands, travelling thousands of miles, leaving her own family behind for a month and coming only to cook, scrub, wash and clean, morning, noon and night ….it was as if that was a duty, something that had been expected of her. It was not and I failed to recognize that.

The baby, the grandson, for whom Maman had come to toil that hot summer in 2000, that baby is today a man, a loving, affectionate, dutiful son that a father wouldn’t expect in his wildest dreams.

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On the day Maman went back, I accompanied her in the Deccan Queen Express to Mumbai for her Iran Air flight home, while Farah stayed home with our baby son.

We boarded the train, she huddled at a window seat, with the tip of her nose touching the window glass. She stared out the window at the countryside rolling by and I sat next to her with an issue of Time Magazine that I’d picked up at the AH Wheeler’s and listlessly leafed through it.

There was this sudden realization of an enormous vacuum within me. That morning even Joel Stein’s irreverently funny column, which was on the Tech bubble, couldn’t make me burst into laughter and I wasn’t even an investor.

Soon the DQ cleared the Lonavala rail station, clattered over multiple track changes and finally settled on one as we ran lickety split into the Western Ghats, Mumbai another hour away.

At one point, the coach suddenly swayed a bit more vehemently than normal. My shoulder bumped into Maman’s. Turning to apologize, I saw she was quietly crying. I reached around and held her gently by her tiny shoulders. She turned, sighed and rested her head on my arm, the tears now rolling down both cheeks.

“Thank you for everything, Maman,” I said to her softly. Even though she doesn’t speak a word of English, she nodded.

Maman’s head was still nestled on my shoulder when the DQ sallied into Dadar Central, Mumbai. We took a cab to Sahar, reaching there just when they were announcing check-in and security for the Iran Air flight. It was on time.

Those days, if you were seeing someone off at Mumbai’s Sahar International Airport, you couldn’t go in. The entrance for visitors had been cancelled, due to concerns over Islamic terrorism, an ugly evil that had just begun rearing its head there. You had to say your goodbyes from behind a barrier at the entrance to the departures area.

Maman had come to India with just one small bag. I fetched a trolley and loaded her one suitcase onto it and Maman started toward the Iran Air counters. I don’t usually do this but I tarried. I craned my neck to catch a last glimpse of the small, dear, scarfed woman as she disappeared round the corner of the hall with a pause and a wave.

This is a grateful Jamai’s tribute to that most precious lady with the hope she is listening, from her heavenly abode….

“Mamanjan, shomo doos daram!”