Bro Can Wait - By Divya Iyer

Written By: Divya Iyer

Category: Essay

Competition: Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

In her poignant essay titled "Bro Can Wait," Divya Iyer delves into the nuanced dynamics of motherhood and the evolving relationship with her son. As part of Hashtag Kalakar's Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, this insightful piece captures the emotional journey of a mother navigating her son's transition from childhood to adolescence. With humor and heart, Iyer explores the shifting roles and terms of endearment that define family bonds.

About the Work

"Bro Can Wait" beautifully encapsulates the bittersweet journey of a mother coping with her son's growing independence. Divya Iyer skillfully weaves humor with deep emotional undertones, capturing the essence of parental love that adapts yet remains constant. The essay resonates with universal themes of identity, change, and the enduring bond between a parent and child, offering readers a touching reflection on the passage of time.

Bro can wait

Original Submission by Divya Iyer

Bro Can Wait

The first time my son called me "bro," I was standing in the kitchen holding a ladle, and I believe I experienced, in rapid succession, every stage of grief. Denial: he must be talking to someone behind me. Anger: I carried you for nine months, forty weeks, two hundred and eighty days of hosting you like a very demanding tenant. Bargaining: perhaps if I made his favourite sambar, ranks could be restored. Depression: I looked at the ladle with something approaching nostalgia. Acceptance arrived remarkably fast, mostly because dinner still needed making.

He had walked past, eleven years old, headphones around his neck, possessed of the casual swagger of a boy who had recently learned to pour his own juice, and said, without breaking stride, "Bro, have you seen my charger?"

Bro.

I turned. I looked at him. I looked at the ladle in my hand, the same ladle that had made his baby kanji, his first curd rice, a thousand Maggi treaties negotiated at midnight with the gravity of the Geneva Convention. I had stirred his entire childhood with that ladle. I looked back at him. "Bro?" I said.

"Yeah bro." And he was gone, vanished into his room, while I stood in the kitchen being gently demoted by a person whose temperature I had taken a thousand times with my own lips.

For weeks after, I conducted a quiet internal survey of my titles. Amma, the original, the sacred, the one he used when he was small and everything in his world began and ended with me, the word he had said before he could say anything else. I have it on video: fourteen months old, arms out, unstoppable, "Am-mah!" as though he had invented both the word and me. Mum, the schoolyard import, deployed when friends were present, a badge of his expanding world, and somehow a promotion for me too, proof that I was cool enough to survive translation. Ma, the universal coin, casual currency, spent a hundred times a day. And now bro, the newest rank in a hierarchy that no longer has me at the top.

I began, I admit, a small campaign of reclamation. Extra podi in the dabba. His favourite meals on ordinary days. I left notes in his tiffin: "Have a great day, Amma," as though signing a treaty with my own disappearance. He never mentioned the notes. He ate the food. I told myself it was a failed diplomatic effort and tried to be mature about it. I was not mature about it. I mentioned the notes to two friends and my mother, all of whom agreed it was a phase, none of whom understood that a phase is only comforting when it is somebody else's.

The notes, I later discovered, were smoothed flat and kept in his drawer beside a chocolate wrapper, though neither of us has acknowledged this, and neither of us ever will. I found them on a laundry reconnaissance mission, a stack of them, dated, the earliest ones slightly crumpled and then progressively flatter, as though his hands had grown gentler with the keeping of them. I stood there holding my own handwriting and understood that I had not been filed away. I had been filed properly, which is what mothers do for everything that matters. I put them back exactly as I found them. Some vaults you do not announce you have found.

Then, last month, he fell sick. A fever, nothing serious, but enough to make him small again, the way illness does, the way it peels the eleven years off a boy like wet paint. He woke in the night, burning, and I did what I have done since he was born: I sat beside him, I laid my hand on his forehead, and I stayed. The fan turned. The streetlight made a rectangle on the wall. The whole apartment slept except us two, like a night shift I had volunteered for eleven years ago and never once wanted off.

And in the dark, half-asleep, burning with fever, he said the word.

"Amma."

Not bro. Not ma. Amma, the original file, the first document, the name he spoke before he knew what names were. He said it the way he said it at fourteen months, arms out, unstoppable, except now the arms stayed under the blanket and the word alone had to do the reaching. And I understood then what I had been grieving over for no reason: the word was never gone. It was simply resting, filed away under layers of growing up, waiting for the day his guard came down, the day of fever, of fear, of heartbreak, of the thousand ordinary disasters of a life, when he would need to be small again, and would reach, as he reached in the dark, for the one word that has ever meant safety.

He is eleven. He calls me bro at breakfast, ma in the corridor, mum when his friends are over. I answer to all of them. I have become, officially, a multilingual institution, open all hours, fluent in every dialect of need.

But at 2 AM, with my hand on his forehead, I am Amma.

And I have it on good authority, the authority of eleven years, of fevers survived and chargers found and dabbas emptied and notes kept flat in drawers beside chocolate wrappers, that I will be Amma at 2 AM for as long as I have a hand to lay on his forehead.

Bro can wait.

About the Competition

The Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a celebration of literary creativity, inviting writers from various backgrounds to share their unique voices and stories. This platform encourages participants to explore diverse themes, showcasing their talent and passion for the written word. Through this competition, Hashtag Kalakar continues its commitment to nurturing and promoting creative expression.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to Divya Iyer for her touching essay, "Bro Can Wait," submitted to the Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Her narrative offers a profound glimpse into the evolving dynamics of motherhood, leaving a lasting impression on all who read it. We are grateful for her contribution and look forward to more of her insightful writing.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.