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…     

Long Live The Girls

Being an Indian, lets begin with India. She is unfathomable to the extent that it requires a Sorcerer's ball to unfold the mysterious twists and turns it offers to the observers gasping in awe. Few countries (other than the sub continent ones) would vie for the most eclectic and eccentric practices followed with such gusto- least being imaginable- for the acts are inhumanely ghastly and grotesque in nature.


Who in the world would commit a murder of their own offspring- not once or twice but till its born with a stick to poke around.

Over the years this crime of selective de-pregnation has maimed the unborn voices of hundreds of thousands across this so-venerated a land of one of the most ancient civilizations. The inflated/deflated Governmental databases throw a sorry figure and it pinches more when they declare with camouflaged apathy: a falling ratio in the last two decades- does it sets the alarm bells ringing!!!! Well, if no- here comes a true conversational epoch that took place not very long ago.

There was a conversation between two friends regarding marriage- not a debate but on the highs and lows of  arranged marriage (a practised custom in India where marital bells jingle by the most active participation of the parents/relatives rather than the gentleman and the lady).  Points of discussion were:

• A lot of investigations must be made prior to in order to unearth hidden skeletons in the closet, if any, by both the sides.
• Understanding each other (including the ifs and buts) as well as the families.
• Lots of selections at hand to choose from (applicable to both sides). Here the ratio is skewed in an altogether different manner.
• Unnecessary expenses at every nodal point of progress.
• Finally, the biggest risk-ful adventure(mis-) of one's life (Still marriage is regarded as the union of social values; though the number of divorce cases are on the rise, somehow the adjustments and reconciliations play a much bigger role and the social fabric remains intact- a big joke where womanhood suffers on a daily basis in a cruel way).

One of the friends was a genuine stickler of brains, brawn(in sports), humility and more such qualities of desire. The other was a romantic of nature.  These two guys and a host of their other friends considered studies as the biggest challenge- though other challenges did exist in the form of sports, adda sessions (the state of West Bengal is popular for gossip sessions over tea, biscuits and other such local delicacies), friendship (minus girls in most of the cases) and booze as well in some (lets agree on more) cases. While some of their other friends who diligently broke into the other part of the friendship (plus girls in most of the cases) did manage to hold the hands of the fairer sex and enjoyed a part of life which these poor fellows missed and would never be able to turn the time for a chance come whatever. The issues that pop their heads out could be summarized as:

1. Did they not manage to hold hands because of their (mis)adventurous lifestyle?
2. The custom of having a girlfriend(s) was still in its nascent stage!
3. There were few good-looking girls in their circle of reach/observation/expectancy!
4. There were not enough girls to cope up with the demand (it is purely a demand-supply mismatch statement and not a rhetoric at all, no need for the pro-woman groups to batter me for this statement!!).

Somehow, all the factors do manage to garner a swish of vote against their notions but primarily it's the paucity of girls ( good-looking is a vague concept that I reject uprightly: Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder- courtesy Mr.John Keats). Sins committed by our previous generations have yielded forms so thick and fast- where do our sins would take the coming generation (if any)???? 

We all- specially the government- are on the big watch out for tigers, trees and other such hotly contested extincting beings (or things- considering the way they are used!!) but we do care least about "if girls become extinct species"- ohh!!! my neurons would not support channelizing this thought process to others for the fear of fatal hormonal imbalance......

Let us make this country a one-for-all. For every boy there shall be a girl-  1:1.

Long live the girls.............

[N.B.: The brainy friend confessed that though studies are the biggest pushers in life, one should not neglect the godly creations- must admire it to the core when it is proper to do, as I put it in again time can't be brought back.

One of the characters is my dear friend Animesh.]