A letter to my kids: sometimes, my love for you must feel conditional but on Mother’s Day, let me say that I love you

‘Abandoning dreams of a career may have been in keeping with her era, but my mother threw herself into motherhood.’ Photograph: DR Hutchinson/Getty Images

“Why don’t you ever say, ‘I love you’ to Nanima?”, you used to ask.

“I am Indian! I take my mum to the temple instead.”