A patchwork of love!

Mallika Chopra, daughter of spiritual guru Deepak Chopra and mother to Tara and Leela, began her book 101 Promises To My Baby as a mother���s diary that extended into 101 Questions From My Children. ���Every time my kids asked me a question, I would write it down,��� says Mallika. Mothers all over the world hoard little mementos of their children���s childhoods ��� photographs, notes kids bring home from school, jottings, drawings, broken bits of toys.
Sushila Padmanabhan, a stayat-home mom says she has ���all the newspapers published on my kids birthdays.��� She pulls out The Hindu dated December 13, 1971 to say ���when my son was born, we measured him against it and he was the length of this broadsheet.��� Sanjay Kumar, now a retired Delhi school-teacher whose kids have all flown the coop adds, ���I pull out these audio cassettes recordings of them as kids, and I listen to them with tears rolling down my eyes. I used to have the recorder handy and press ���record��� in the middle of them singing, or talking to themselves. It���s such a pleasure to revisit those times.���
Urna Ramachandran turns her child Bozo���s drawings into magnets for her fridge ��� where everything from his first drawing to photographs and craft sit. Prachi Patel in California confesses that she���s kept all the clothes her kids have outgrown.
���I couldn���t bear to throw out or give away cute, little frocks and T-shirts with kiddie elements on them, as well as memories ��� you know frocks worn on a particular birthday or a favourite tee.��� Until her husband found her hoard and told her to get rid of them that is. ���So a friend���s mother suggested I give them to her and she took pieces of each dress and sewed them together into quilts! Now each of the children���s quilts are made of their own baby clothes.���
Malaika Arora Khan, mother to Arhaan, finds herself grabbing doodles, scribblings, drawings and finds herself following them around the house with audio and video recorders. Model Maria Goretti, mum of Zeke and Zene, loves photographs, ���You can always flick through photographs anytime you want to, unlike audios and videos. So I make plenty of albums and write stuff on each picture ��� I just love doing this as it���s going back to beautiful moments in time.��� Psychiatrist Anjali Chhabria says it���s a great way for a mother and child to bond. ���Mothers always have a sense of time passing by too soon, so it���s a way of holding on. And these days kids leave home sooner than before. You can call it storing joy for later.���
Singapore-based Srividya Subramaniam turns to a computerised journal since space is generally a factor that upsets her hoarding plans. ���I try to scan everything now, and keep the papers also, as far as possible, ��� I don���t know how long papers will last. It also helps us share with family back home in India.���
Stitched into quilts, framed, or scanned ��� a mother���s love just stashes the child in you away forever, so you can keep reverting to it through time!