Kamal Ghorui
Mother’s Day this year delivered something far more memorable than a greeting card or a stand-up comedian ever could.
There we were, three generations of women on a video call: my mother, my two daughters, and me, happily wishing Mother’s Day to one another. The conversation was flowing, the laughter was easy, and then my mother decided to remind everyone present that she was, in fact, the architect of this entire family’s existence.
With the confidence of a CEO presenting quarterly results, she gestured grandly at my daughters and declared that the two of them were an excellent by-product of her product (read me). Bold claim. Accurate, perhaps. But what happened next was where the real story begins.
Now, my mother is someone who can produce a comeback faster than most people can produce a coherent thought. Her backhand volleys are swifter than the returns of most ace tennis players. Wit is her mother tongue, spontaneity her superpower. But that day — that particular day — in her enthusiastic rush to take full credit for the magnificent human being that is me, she leaned into the camera and announced, with complete conviction:
“Look, how well my namoona turned out to be!”
Silence.
Then the kind of laughter that makes you worry about someone’s ability to breathe. And in that split second, I became the butt of all future jokes in the family.
Here’s the thing about the word namoona — it technically means sample. And had she said sample, I might have even preened a little. A sample! A teaser of excellence! A preview of what the universe had to offer!
But namoona doesn’t just mean sample. In everyday, street-level, eyebrow-raised usage, namoona means a specimen — and not the flattering kind. It’s what you call someone when you’re shaking your head slowly and wondering ‘how they turned out exactly like that’. It is a word that arrives with a sigh attached.
In one gloriously unscripted syllable, my mother had taken me from her greatest achievement to Exhibit A.
My daughters, to their credit, did not let the moment pass. They held it, framed it, and hung it permanently on the wall of family folklore. I am now, and shall forever remain, the namoona — brought up at dinners, deployed during disagreements, and hash tagged in family chats with alarming regularity.
I have always believed that language has the power to make or mar a person’s personality. But that day, I also realized that a simple translation can gloriously sabotage an otherwise perfectly crafted masterpiece. A cautionary lesson for translators in the making.
I’ve made peace with it. Mostly. But the memory will continue to hover over me like Macbeth’s dagger—appearing at the most inconvenient moments, sharp enough to wound my dignity all over again.
However, I believe that if you must be a specimen of something, let it at least be of a family where the wit is this sharp, the love this loud, and the Mother’s Day memories this utterly, beautifully ridiculous.
And Maa — your namoona turned out just fine. Namoona of you to notice.
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