Mother

Womanhood needs to be celebrated as often as we can. Pristine, pious, natural and effervescent. As children we’ve went through a peck of subjects- literature, science, civics and the dreaded mathematics (it still a mystery as to why there exists a pre-conceived bias towards this beautiful as beautiful a subject!!). Today’s children are carrying that legacy too and the futuristic projections speak of a similar order. We then hated certain subjects (in general literature) and wished if they could be done away with. I shudder in fear- what if it had happened in actuality- I may not be gifted to think all these actually! Yes, it is the thinking and analysis part- emotions, expressions and understanding that literature and language papers bequeath upon- it is undoubtedly their worthiest endowment. Yet they languish in the bins- in a comatose state of perpetual degradation. And yet we still find our way to metamorphose into ‘good beings’ on account of other characteristics and under the lustful eyes of this adulterated society where the pathos of women are regularly swept under the carpet- as if there is never going to be ‘a day’. How naïve!!

It is not that the coin doesn’t have another side- but, in general, woman has been objectified to an unassuming extent for practising criminals to lay their bare hands on and still do away with the laws available in the honourable Constitution. And we are all aware of a process called ‘growth’ as well as ‘spare the rod spoil the child’ theory, but still the society allows the rogue elements to grow and nurture within. The cases like Ruchika Girhotra, Aarushi, Jessica, etc. speak volumes (not to include the innumerable cases that go unrecorded and unnoticed) of biased criminality. Why? - Because woman has been crowned as fairer and weaker and tender sex. ‘Chivalric hypocrisy’ has infested our society and its roots are wrecking and jolting the established normative attitude and behavior of the people. In this context I present a few incidents that I observed in my day-to-day life.

1. We three friends were sitting in a popular eatery in Salt Lake in Kolkata and on an adjacent table was sitting an elderly lady (probably waiting for her children). She looked a little uncomfortable as her old visage suggested. Came her modern daughter-in-law with her baby child (less than a year old) and in a tone of cold-hearted callousness inquired if she was feeling comfortable and adding a weighty suggestion not to dwell too much on her problems!! The comforting words never healed as they were not supposed to; then arrived the son of the old lady with food plates and the nuclear family (except the old lady) buried themselves in a spree of photo taking and relishing the dishes. The old lady nonchalantly buried her pains in the moments of her son and his family. Or her family??

Questions:

• Are the Sunday Dinners in a restaurant more fulfilling and worthier than a Mother’s comfort?
• Where is the need to be ‘selective about happiness’?

Moral: A sagacious king takes good care of all his subjects without prejudice and allows his mind to work in conjunction with the heart. The daughter-in-law might have missed the opportunity to reflect qualities of a good king/queen and so did the son.

2. I was going to Uttarpara on a sunny rainy morning- from Shyambazar on the legendary Bus No. 3. This bus tests the patience of the most overzealous procrastinator’s mind. The slowest of the snails laugh at its slowness. I’ve heard them puking (when they are drunk) on the jokes at the expense of Bus No.3. It got oversubscribed at Dunlop and a young lady with a baby boarded it. None of us men made chivalrous gestures; a younger lady promptly offered her the seat. The excellently-laid roads were vibrating our bodies and poked at the baby’s slumber. May be something else as well. The Mother sensed the hunger and opened her bosoms- lull arrived- Mother scored over the nature’s shocking vibration; canopying the baby and herself with the side of her sari- the pallu; the prying eyes of the society shamelessly shattered in their defeat. The man opposite to her was looking down- now.    

Question: ‘Man with one-part libido and nine-part intelligence still loses battles against woman with one part intelligence and nine-part libido!’

(Quoting from a Sufi story as told to me by my friend Arjun).

Moral: Virtues in life are to be practiced by relevant actions and not mere words. Start offering the virtues and then live happily ever after.

3. On the same Sunday in the evening at City Centre in Salt Lake, Kolkata, I saw a lady with a baby resting its head on her Mother’s shoulders and the cries of the baby were promptly justified by thrusting a bottle of milk into her tiny mouth. The cries were punctuated and changed to gargles.

Question: Were those gargles suggestive of the baby’s contentment or symbolizing the hidden bubbles of refusal?

Moral:

• Breastfeeding is not a cultural degradation or an unfashionable statement. It is yet to be enlisted in the endangered practices of the modern era. Mother’s milk helps the child to defend against a serpentine list of attacks. Exercises will definitely help ‘to get back in shape’.

• Shopping may wait aunty, neither the milk, nor the baby!!

The three protagonists are the three ladies with a shared attribute that puts them all on a common platform- they care for the baby or the child in totality or non-reflecting totality (explicitly or implicitly). They care least about the different interpretations of the society. To them it is the child that matters. They brought the child and nurtured it in their womb bracing all the events during that period.

In retrospect- does the society reciprocated actions with any dignified poise? The child, at once, forgets the pains of the Mother when grows big enough to be classified as an adult. The society is sure not to mend or bend its lecherous ways. The society, however, may be successful in mending the ways of the new age mothers who would care the most only about the child, with the material options available to them. It’s the purity that is going to suffer, sadly. A vicious circle waits and smiles back at the society; the society narrowly missed the smile else it would have started working on the plans to re-design its thinking and action cap for a rosy and bright picture ahead. Wake up. Wake up…