Amma and Amuu

Yog said his words when he was 5 months old. These words were “Abbba” calling out to his dad. I waited a long time to hear him call me “Mama”. Then one day, few months back, he started saying “Amma”. Since that day, his whole vocabulary has consisted of pretty much one word only, “Amma”. When he sees his dad coming in, he rushes to him and says “Amma Da” ( “Mom come” in Telugu). When he wants to ask a question, he says “Amma ??” with a questioning tone, his eyebrows raised and his palms turned upwards in a question. When he is happy, he throws his head back, laughs aloud and exclaims, “Ammma!!!!” The word that I waited for months to hear, has been resounding almost constantly in our house for a long time now. Infact, it has been pretty much the only decipherable word in Yogs, otheriwse, gibberish vocabulary.

While I was basking in the glory of being the only word in his vocabulary, I was overthrown from this title, by none other than our four year old neighbor, “Amu”.  I admit she is adorable and I can image why Yog loves her so much, but I am unable to comprehend how she could ever stand in competition to me. Anyhow, Yog has two words in his vocabulary now, Amuuuuuuu and Ammmmma. Other words do come in but those are all combinations of syllables added/modified from these two main words, like Bamma, Ammama, Akka, Atta.

The other day, I was musing about this, wondering how kids hook on to the sounds of AA and MMM. It struck me that these two syllables are in fact what also represent the chant of all chants “OM” also referred to as “AUM” in Sanskrit. AUM is considered the sound of God that gives consciousness to mother nature. The sound of AUM encompasses all words, all sounds in the human language. No wonder then, that whatever might be the language we speak, the word Mother is always a combination of these two syllables – Amma, Mamma, Mom, or Maa.

By calling out to their mothers, young kids are actually calling out to the entire universe. At the same time, they are practicing all the syllables that they need to speak in their later life. Now I understand, why Yog has been chanting Amma all this time. It is not, so much to do with me, but the entire cosmos around me.