She was a young beautiful young woman in Eighties. She had boys around trying to woo her. She got married before she could complete
her studies. She had a baby in her womb before she could learn how to hold a
baby in her arms. This brief is her story.
She lost her fragile girlish body to be a house wife, a hard
working daughter in law, a vigilant care taker and a responsible mother.
This girl was my mother…as I imagined of her gazing at the black
and white family photo album and the life she had lived in the last three
decades.
She had handled her own share of woes and she had too walked
on the patchy paths that she was destined to.
I was in pain to think of the difficult times she faced probably when she,
like all of us, wanted to leave it all and run away. And, like most of us, she didn’t.
But one questioned that kept banging my head…”Did she really
give birth to the daughter she wanted to.”
An inner voice grabbed me by my neck and asked me- Was I
really the reward of her struggle.… Had I ever thought of what Mom had
imagined about me.
The moment when she would have held her baby in her arms, she
would have seen of the flash of the little world that she had created. And with every passing day, she'd have pinned hopes from her.
Probably she wanted that little bundle to grow up as strong as she never had been in her decisions. Probably she wanted her to be a girl
who would master her own destiny and fly around the world. Probably she wanted her to have wings of fire and roots of her dreams. Probably
she looked upon her as the answer of her all her incapacities.
Or, may be, she wanted her to be a woman of forbearance, a girl
who could create her progenies and from whom her little particles of her own
shadows would walk on little steps when her hair would be grey. Probably she
wanted her to have a similar extended family as she created and nurtured. May be that would have 'completed' her.
I wasn’t sure.
I realized how I had befailed her in more than one ways. I had
befailed her because I chose my own path of struggle and nomadic life. I had
befailed her because I had turned down the only legacy that she had to entrust me- “to Trust Life”.
I cannot remember my mother,
ReplyDeleteonly sometime in the midst of my play
a tune seems to hover over my playthings,
the tune of some song that she used to
hum while rocking my cradle.
I cannot remember my mother
but when in the early autumn morning
the smell of the shiuli flowers floats in the air,
the scent of the morning service in the
temple comes to me as the scent of my mother.
I cannot remember my mother
only when from bedroom window
I send my eyes into the blue of the distant sky,
I feel that the stillness of my mother's gaze on my face
has spread all over the sky.
जननीजन्मभूमिश्चस्वर्गादपिगरीयसी
ReplyDelete(Jananijanmabhoomischaswargadapigariyasi)
Mother and motherland are superior to Heaven.