Oscar Wilde nailed it. This is possibly the biggest tribute I can give my amma.

My mother was born in Rangoon, Burma in 1935. Her father, like many other Indian nationals then, worked in the Indian Railways there. When WW2 broke out, the family was forced to return to Nellikuppam in Tamil Nadu, India. Although it is primarily an agricultural town, with paddy fields and coconut plantations being the main sources of income, it was also the site of the first sugar factory in India – E. I. D Parry (now a Murugappa Group Company).

After the war, in 1948, they went back to a newly independent Burma but things were not the same anymore. Nationalism was taking root. Not wanting to remain as foreigners there, my grandfather decided to pack up and leave Burma, this time for good and settled in Cuddalore, also known as Kadalur, located in the Cuddalore district of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

My mother went to school, played at the ice factory there, and later moved again to Bangalore, and Trichy before finally ending up at Madras (now Chennai). That’s what working in the civil service does to you, as it did my grandfather. You get to see the world for free…sort of.

Amma completed high school, started working, and then in 1958, arranged by her grandmother to get married to my father in India who had gone bride hunting there and duly returned with him, newlywed, to Penang, Malaya.

She was all but 23. It must have been traumatic for her. First, getting married to someone she barely knew. Then, leaving her entire family and coming to a foreign land, with little knowledge of what was in store for her here.