Maya, my first granddaughter gave me that name ‘Pancho’. Now I am stuck with it.
Gikkamma is another name I was given by my first nephew and the rest കുട്ടിപ്പട്ടാളം followed him, all call me 🤙 the same, meaning gigikochamma.
I was 7+ or 8+ when my nephew started calling me Gikkamma. He is 6 years younger to me.
My mother-in-law Ammachi was living with us, when Maya was born. Priya left the child 🧒 with us to continue her education in England 🏴 along with Aby. We had a live in Malayalee maid to take care of everything. I was working full time.
So between grandmother & great grandmother we had to share the joy 🤩 of holding the little one.
I would be tired 😓 when I came back from work. I spent my evening half an hour with Maya and then only started the usual chores of cooking 🍳 🥘 🧑🍳 or warming up for dinner.
Before I go to sleep, I took Maya to sleep 😴 with me. She would be sleeping on my right hand armpit all night. In between I woke up to feed her or change her diaper.I never felt is a chore. I enjoyed every moment I got a chance to be with her all by myself.
I got everything in return then itself by her cooing or smiling or a kiss 😘.
Early in the morning, when I get up, I packed her and her things & returned her to Ammachi. She would be waiting to get her back, it seemed.
Then I got ready & left for work.
It was the daily routine.
There was always a competition between the mother-in-law and me about almost everything, you can’t even take count of. But Ammachi was actually a very smart, intelligent lady, good looking, classy and stylish and and and very fair too. Actually there was no need of any complex for her. But it was her nature, now I wish, I should have this much wisdom at that time not to get offended that easily, every time she gave me some kind of insult.
With her SSLC and TTC diploma, she handled her spoken English better than the normal degree holders from India.
Anyway she was being called Ammachi by her kids, all of us & anybody who knew her closely. According to the tradition, Maya is supposed to call me Ammachi, her grandmother.
But Ammachi wanted herself to be the one and only Ammachi in our family. She tried her best not to give me the name Ammachi.
So she started to teach Maya, who is just learning to talk, whenever I went near them,
“See who is here, Maya?
A-Ammachi, say A-Ammachi”.
When it didn’t work, she tried with
B-Ammachi
C-Ammachi
or something else she can think of other than simple Ammachi!
Maya didn’t call me anything till she left after few months to join her parents.
When Maya went to stay with her parents she might be 2+ years old. After few months, I flew with Babu to see Aby & Priya at Dominican Republic. Maya came with her parents to receive us. She recognized me and just started calling me “poncho” without anybody prompting her from the Airport itself.
That day onwards I became her one and only Poncho or Pancho!
I felt like I am in Heaven. Priya was pregnant 🤰 with Nora. Ammachi was already staying with them at that time, when Maya went to stay. She was happy 😊 too, since there was no immediate competition to get all Maya’s affection.
That’s how I got the name Poncho and Nora also calls me Pancho.
N.B After reading this my grand daughter, Maya reached out to me. This is what I wrote to her as a reply:
You gave me all the love you can give me, so even if you don’t show me that much love like before, I have a lifelong worth of love in stock from you from those days, I can visualize each moment and feel the same thrill I felt. No complaint from your Poncho/Pancho , never.
I love you 😘 as well as Nora same same way. I hope she will understand this Universal Truth.
A mother can never differentiate her children 👶 when sharing her love to them.
Your Appa & Pappy are the typical example of the same.
Your Appa made me an Ammakili for the first time in my life. I learned to love every body born into this world. Your Dad taught me that…how to be a mother, how to share things, how to be patient, how to be at your best behavior while somebody looks to me as his Idol.
Pappy came as a gift 🎁, once I stopped praying to God for a baby. He taught me it is not that difficult to bring up a child, because at that time I was not a child any more, but grown up to be a mature woman 👩 of 33.
So now you know.
I love them equally…
But I know that I didn’t get that much time to spend alone with her, all by myself!