Some Sundays stay with you long after the dishes are washed and the aprons folded away. Sunday, 3rd May 2026, was one of those.
It began, as most beautiful things do in our community, with a question.
For the last two years, PoojaBharat has gathered Indian families across Sydney for events that feel like backyard home chai circles, festivals under fairy lights, women’s wellness challenges, and countless quiet moments of sisterhood. But somewhere between the celebrations, we started asking ourselves a quieter question.
What do we want our children to remember us for?
Not the brunches. Not the gifts. Not the perfect Instagram moments of Mother’s Day.
We wanted them to remember the way our hands moved when we fed someone who needed it, the way our mothers moved before us, and the way theirs moved before them. “Anna-daan se bada koi daan nahi. No charity is greater than the gift of food.”
That was the seed of “Cooking with Compassion.”
By 8:00 AM that Sunday, the kitchen had transformed.
Trays clattered, knives tapped, children weaved between legs, and the unmistakable hum of an Indian family operation filled the air. We were there to cook vegetarian pasta and veg bake for the homeless community the Mission serves each week, and to decorate cupcakes that our children would later hand out themselves.
In one corner stood Mrs Leela Gune, ninety-plus years old, chopping vegetables with the precision of a woman who has fed a lifetime of people.
She refused the chair we offered. “Beta, this thick, otherwise they won’t soften properly,” she instructed a younger volunteer, then turned around and made a five-year-old laugh by pretending to steal his cupcake. “At my age,” she smiled, “the only thing that keeps me young is feeding people. As long as my hands can chop, I will chop. As long as my heart can love, I will love.”
Beside her, her daughter-in-law, Mrs Anita Gune, worked alongside her daughter, Rashmi, three generations threaded together by piping bags and laughter, decorating cupcakes baked the night before by Ayesha, a wonderfully talented young baker from our community.Surekha, with her quiet expertise and decades of cooking wisdom, anchored the kitchen with the kind of presence every Indian kitchen needs, so that one taste from her spoon told us we were on the right track.Milli and Shilpa moved through it all like they were running their own home kitchens, chopping, stirring, lifting spirits. “This is exactly the kind of Mother’s Day I wanted,” Shilpa laughed, flour on her cheek.
Then there were the Bhatias, who arrived at 8 AM sharp. Master Eerav, no taller than the counter, took on the serious job of peeling carrots and chopping sweet potatoes. Hours later, he would walk up to the serving table with cupcakes in his small hands, offering them to strangers with the unselfconscious kindness only children carry. “In our culture,” his father Amit Bhatia said quietly, “you don’t wait until you have plenty to give. You give what you have, today.”
Dr Sharmila and her son Arjuna stepped away from a packed schedule to join us a quiet reminder that no matter how full our diaries get, there is always room to feed someone who needs it.
Across the room, Anjalee had come with her adult children, young adults who chose to spend their Sunday morning here. “I wanted my kids to see what Mother’s Day looks like in our family,” she said. “Not breakfast in bed. Service. Because one day they will be parents too.”
And Parul Mehta from Indian Matrimonial, with our friend Sanyjot, worked the kitchen like they’d been part of it forever. “Food is the first language of love,” Parul smiled. “Today we just spoke it a little louder.”By noon, we wheeled the trays out under the great old tree beside St Patrick’s Cathedral, where the Mission’s community lunch was being set up. Long white tables, gloved hands, a quiet queue of guests waiting for their weekly meal.
And then came the moment none of us will forget.Our children, the same ones who had been giggling over icing two hours earlier, stepped up to the serving tables and began offering plates to strangers.
Carefully. Quietly. With the seriousness only children carry when they sense something sacred is happening.Mothers stood back and watched. Some of us had to look away, eyes full.
Mother’s Day isn’t the same for everyone. For some, it’s flowers and brunch.
For others, a quiet ache of missing someone. For some, a day without a mother at all. But there is one thing all of us can do to hold up the humanity of the day.
Carry forward what mothers have always done: feed people, soften the world, leave it warmer than we found it.
A mother’s heart melts when she cooks for her children. What we discovered on Sunday was that the same melting happens when we cook for anybody’s children, when we cook for the whole family of humanity.
That is the kind of Mother’s Day we want to keep celebrating.To every soul who poured love into those trays and to our children, who served with such grace, our mothers and their mothers would be proud.
– Pooja Bharat Sethi
