My mom was working through my childhood, so I would be running around Mumbai from one dance class to another with my mom carrying the tape recorder with me. I would sit on the sidelines and watch her teach dance.
When I was in high school in Los Angeles, my mother, who was a speech therapist, agreed to stay over the weekend with one of her clients and his little sister while the parents went away on vacation. She brought me along.
My mom worked for Lockheed Corp. in Burbank as an inspector of airplane parts. To help make ends meet, Dee, a friend of my mom's from Lockheed, moved in. She was a lovely person and helped with our care for many years.
My mother was a - she worked at a halfway house. And one of the former inmates slid me a mix-tape full of different hip-hop songs. And so that was my first kind of experience with rap music.
I have been very fortunate to have a partner who really stepped up and have wonderful children who do a lot of things that make it easy for Mommy to do this work.
No ordinary work done by a man is either as hard or as responsible as the work of a woman who is bringing up a family of small children; for upon her time and strength demands are made not only every hour of the day but often every hour of the night.
By the time the children go to bed, I am as drained as any mother who has spent her day working, car pooling, building Lego castles and shopping for the precisely correct soccer cleat.
You see, my mother was a district nurse until she died when I was 14, and we used to move from time to time because of her work.
When I look back at those pictures of my mother performing - and listen to her recordings - it makes me sad to think that all of that joy she found in her work came to an end. I wish she hadn't had to make that sacrifice, even if it was for the benefit of my father and siblings and me.
I was 13 when I first saw my mum's films. There were these boys who said to me, 'Your mum makes sexy films,' and I said, 'She doesn't.' Then I watched them and my mum makes sexy films! I'm a huge fan of my mum.
When my mother did fittings for her clients, I was hiding, looking at these beautiful ladies try on these fantastic clothes. I was dreaming as a small child to try these clothes on myself.
