Today’s post is inspired by a TV ad for Havell’s cables. The premise is simple. A mother (the lady in the picture) is making rotis for her eight-year old who’s studying by the light of a street-lamp. He watches quietly for a while as she keeps getting burnt while picking the rotis out of the fire. Finally he walks off (to her surprise), finds a length of Havell’s cable and returns with a pair of tongs made out of the wire for her so she doesn’t get burnt.

This is a still of the mother looking at her son after he hands her the tongs. The expression on her face simply defies description. There is gratitude for the tongs, unmistakable pride and, a wistful acknowledgement of the painful fact that she and her son, though drawn closer through his act of concern and kindness, are also drifting apart in subtle ways because of it. It is her struggle to feed him while he sits with a book (that is incomprehensible to her) that, ironically, is pushing him irrevocably towards a future and a world of which she knows nothing and cannot be a part.