Begum Akhtar: The Story of My Ammi

Indian Legends have a way of completely disappearing from public memory as living, breathing (sometimes fire-breathing!), three-dimensional characters who are both loved and loathed for what they are. They remain stuck somewhere on the firmament, like the stars, unreachable, unassailable, untouchable. It is considered blasphemous to even think of deconstructing their myth, equal in depravity to acknowledging one s parents sex lives! As a result of which the things that one would have liked to say to them remain unsaid. Resentments and imagined slights grow and fester. Social hypocrisy demands that we, the acolytes, remain quiet. The pain of our rejection mellows with the years and then suddenly a day comes when we forget the living person, the trappings that defined them, trivia that seemed so important then is completely forgotten. All that remains in our minds is an image of some demigod, performing superhuman feats.