Silent Kitchens, Spoken Hearts

My mother spent most of her life in the kitchen. She rarely spoke but communicated through the dishes she prepared. She won our hearts through our stomachs and knew what to serve, to whom, and when. My friends and relatives loved her food.
I was labelled a “mama’s boy,” trailing behind her as she performed her daily rituals. Unlike today’s mothers, who schedule parent-teacher meetings and monitor homework apps, my mother never checked my notebooks or questioned my academic choices. Yet, somehow, she knew when I needed silent encouragement — a unique sweet (rava laddu) appearing beside my textbooks during exam week.
My father was a thunderstorm in our home. His presence silenced the house, and I never conversed with him. He dictated our family’s path with an iron certainty, leaving no space for discussion. Words were scarce commodities between my parents — they exchanged inefficient, hushed transactions when necessary. But in moments of crisis, my mother’s quiet resolve would emerge. Without raising her voice, she’d somehow bend the family’s course to safe harbour. Her strength wasn’t in loud proclamations but in the subtle silence that guided us.
A different mother-son relationship existed within the same walls — my grandmother and father. Their interactions were filled with warmth and liveliness that was absent in my father’s relationship with anyone else. They would argue openly, laugh freely, and engage in lengthy discussions I struggled to understand. My father, often seen as the head of the household, was a different person in his mother’s presence. He was gentle, compassionate, and full of empathy. His love and respect for her were evident in every interaction, every gesture.
My grandmother lost her husband when my father was just three months old. As an uneducated woman in those times, her path seemed impossible — yet she raised my father alone, without remarrying or seeking refuge with relatives. They shared the same roof for seventy years and rarely separated for over a week.
There were moments when I would catch my father watching her from across the room, a look of tenderness in his eyes that I never saw directed at anyone else. It was a brief softening, a glimpse of the boy within the stern man. He never openly declared his love for her. Still, it was evident in the countless small gestures: the way he would joke and spend time with her during coffee breaks, the way he would share the day’s events with her, the way he would be the first to greet her in the morning, and the way he would ensure she got her favorite vegetables every Sunday.
I witnessed two mother-son relationships under one roof—one characterized by silent understanding, the other by animated exchange—yet both anchored by an unbreakable devotion that transcended the need for modern expressions of affection or involvement. Observing these parallel bonds, I have understood that love speaks in different languages across generations, but its essence remains unchanged.