April 2024 Newsletter

Dear friends,

I’d like to dedicate this month’s newsletter to my mother who passed away at the end of March, at the age of 87.

She was a breast cancer survivor, and I’m so very grateful she lived for another 11 years after her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. In those eleven years she attended the weddings of two grandchildren and welcomed three great grandchildren. This is the reason why Maina Foundation is so close to my heart. Screening for breast cancer saves lives, and thank you for your donations, which give back years to women and their families.

My mother, like billions of other people, was not famous, or brilliant, or even worldly. She was a simple woman who lived a simple life.

But she was my best friend, and my hero, and I miss her dearly.

Born in South Africa, she was sent away to India as a young teenager by a strict father. Traveling 3rd class in the hull of a ship, she was sea sick for most of the month-long voyage. In India, she and her cousin were almost slave labor for relatives in the village. They would be woken up at 3:00 am to take the buffalos to the watering holes, and then expected to milk them, and attend to household chores for the rest of the day.

When she returned to South Africa at the age of 16, her marriage to my father, a young lawyer, was arranged almost immediately. One of her biggest regrets was she was never sent to school, and yet in the three years of her engagement, she learned to read and write English with a special tutor hired by my father. She also managed to get her driver’s license and learned to type, and was on her way to becoming his legal secretary.

But her plans for a career were thwarted by the arrival, in quick succession, of first my older brother, then me, and then my younger brother. Being unable to fulfil her dreams, she lived vicariously through my achievements. When I got into a medical school, it was if she had, when I graduated as a doctor it was as much her achievement as mine, and she rejoiced when I became an ophthalmologist. She was a staunch believer in women’s rights and independence in spite of never having heard the words ‘women’s empowerment.’ It was through my mom I learned one doesn’t have to be educated to be intelligent, or wise, or kind, or empathetic.

She spent a lifetime trying to learn new things. She loved understanding technology, spending hours over my father’s old iPad, viewing YouTube cooking videos and listening to spiritual songs.

Over six decades she brought up her family, surviving rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, and all its complications, and life itself. She was a caring, and sometimes tempestuous, wife, a mother who expected us to work hard and didn’t hesitate to snap us in line with a few sharp words, a doting grandmother who loved feeding her seven grandchildren, and a proud great grandmother of three little boys.

She was a fantastic cook, with an attention to detail and perfection that transformed cooking into an artform. I remember the warm mouth-watering smell of the ghee she made in massive vats in our garage, the handmade papad, sev and puris she rolled and fried, and the wedding food she prepared for so many couples to make their special day unforgettable.

She had enormous discipline, especially when related to working out. As an adolescent I craved sleep, but my mom would wake me up at 5:30 am on freezing winter mornings to attend Jane Fonda-style aerobic classes. For most of her life she went to the gym almost daily until the Covid pandemic forced her to quit. Even then, she stayed fit by walking for an hour up and down the driveway every day.

Honest to a fault, she didn’t hesitate to chide my father’s friend on having an adulterous affair. She navigated and lived her life with strength of character, resilience, and selflessness.

But it was during her funeral, attended by almost 300 people, when I heard stories of how she had touched so many lives, that I realized, like millions of other people, my mom may have had small footprints, but she had huge impact, striding over the world through her personality, her caring, and her unwavering love for her family.

Heroes like my mom don’t have to be famous. They live among us, ordinary people, who, with resilience, courage and kindness, make this world a better place.

Thank you for reading, and for your support in helping to save lives like those of my mom’s!