Keep the Goose, I Want an Egg!

Reminiscing About My Mum, Part 1

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

— Oscar Wilde

Some of you might be aware that after a long illness, my mum passed away last week. This is the first part of what might turn into a series of reminiscences about her extraordinary life.

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One Spring in the late 1980s, my mum drove me to the West End after the break-in at Atlas Village robbed me of all of my equipment, software and possessions. While the loss of my beloved Apricot Xen with its "Paper White" screen on which I had years of assembly code was painful, what really hurt was the theft of my entire First Day Covers collection that my dad had got me, which was every single cover from 1977 to 1984.

Office space in London was ridiculously cheap at the time, at about £9 per square foot in Soho. A small office of 300 square feet would have cost just £225 per month. Even adjusting for inflation, that was a snip.

Given my desperate financial situation, I was hoping, without ever asking, that she'd contribute. After all, she had bought me the Atari 400 that got me started only a few years before.

Reflecting on this at her grave, I realised she was doing what any parent should do. She was lifting my sights. She was inspiring me to look beyond my circumstances and to bootstrap my way to a better future, to see beyond the ashes of my circumstances. I didn't pay attention. I hadn't learned the lesson she was trying to teach me.

Although it took me another 30 years to learn this lesson for myself, I now realise that this is how she lived her entire life. She came from less than nothing in a tiny village in Pakistan. She was a divorcee who managed to buy her own council flat and a second hand BMW. She was a dressmaker to the stars.

She never let the fact that she couldn't write English well stop her from aspiring to better, higher, more than her circumstances. She was a one-off. Her resilience was inspirational, other-worldly even. If we get mild criticism from a boss, that can send us into a tailspin and when we eventually bounce back, we think that’s resilience. We haven’t the faintest idea. My mum once lost all her savings. I’ll never forget that she smiled that day and said “The God who gave me that money the first time around can certainly give it again.”

I once told her in Punjabi (and trust me, this sounds way better than in English) "Mummy, they made your generation from iron, and ours from shit" She laughed, it was a good quip, but replied "The choice between iron and shit is yours!"

Today I choose iron. What about you?