Mothers & Daughters | Amrita Goswami

I should admit Mother, in your pictures I have searched for a certain independent poise. 

I searched for a resoluteness, a knowledge of the world and control, but mostly I found  

a timid, domestic docility that I did not like or wish to identify with.

I gazed at pictures of other women and wondered how would it be like to be their daughter? 

Could I have inherited their direct gaze, their sureness? 

Their free laughter that confident footing?

In the end we can blame it all on our mothers.

How far from our mothers can we go?

Can we win the battles they lost or never wanted to fight? 

How much like my mother do I look?

Do I lapse into domesticity with her kind of ease?

No, I resist it, or so I like to think. 

Wanderlust yet persists.

For my daughter I should fight. 

Her eagerness unbound and her freedom unchecked be,

So she can have a resolute chin and cheerful eyes. 

These bones are shaped over generations, every mother fights.

These bones are shaped over generations, each mother fights.

Amrita Goswami was born in Shillong, India – a pristine hill town and grew up in a typically small town sheltered environment. Education, work and wanderlust have taken her to different parts of the world and made her better understand herself. Now as she approaches middle age, she gazes at familiar things with a new perspective and still continues to write sporadically to give voice to her increasingly cynical thoughts.