My Mother is the Most Beautiful Woman in the World!

Today is Mother’s Day. Wishing all the mothers a Happy Mother’s Day. Today, we have a series of posts dedicated to our mothers and how they introduced us to the world of books. IN this post, Purvi Shah writes about her beautiful mother Ajita.

As a very young child maybe when I was in the 2nd or 3rd standard I had read a Russian folktale [I think] “ My mother is the most beautiful woman in the world”. [In case you are not familiar with the story it’s about a little girl who gets lost and the only thing she can give to identify her mom is that she is the most beautiful woman. When the villages’ most beautiful women are brought to her she says they are not her mother, and finally a fairly ordinary stout woman comes and she rushes and hugs her]

I can connect with the story even so more now when I know through so many financial hardships mom always tried to give the best to the three of us. Whether it was the best education, a membership to the neighborhood library or buying tons and tons of books from the roadside raddiwalla. [Believe it or not she’s still kept my old Tom Sawyer, Shakespeare.. for my son!!!!!].

I’ll also always be indebted to her for teaching us to read and write our mother tongue Gujarati. She would read us one para everyday from the newspaper so that we were connected with our roots – something that I plan to do with my son very soon- read him Pratham Books’ Fat king Thin Dog in GujaratiJ.

So dear mom, here’s wishing you a very Happy Mother’s Day. And here’s to reading more and more books to our children and spreading the joy of reading.