Response to Gargi's post in her blog.

IT would be nice to have a disscussion on the post about mother in GArgi's blog
http://ofadeadyouth.blogspot.com.
In answer to her question how would i be with my child when he grows up...
will i ask back?
Asking back!
What is in return.
What is this to be given in return?
I don't think we leave something in relationships to be gained later on as "conscious retreaval".
WE r here because we create our present.
The mother and child create their present too.
Mother recieves as much fron her child as much as she give.
Pain.
Pleasure.
Belongingness.
Alienation
Everything is shared.
AAdil gives me emotional health.IT's tough to imagine days without seeing him.
I give him the same.
Aadil gives me immense happiness while smiling for every little achievement he has.
I give him the same by being healthy attending him when i'm in peace.
He gives me pain whenever he demands too much
And i do the same treating him as matured when he is still a child.I ask too much from him.
He give me restless days, nights destroys my study materials...I have destroyed his moments of happiness by closing the door behind when i want to communicate with the world outside.

We shared every emotional growth and stagnancies.

When it cease, it cease for both of us.Not that i lose when he disclaims, he loses when i do it.

I think I'm rich enough not to kill him and eat.

If i become too weak and broke i might demand, i might become the mother who demands, i might spent nights in tears...might claim all that in return and what is to be given in return...Had i given him anything that he didn't return at that phase itself?

ya, may be i fed him...he might give me enough money to have food for mysel.over?

What gives mothers the idea that they have done "so much" for their children?I try all means now to get rid of such feelings that I have given so much and...am giving him a fair share.That's all.Well, it might also reduce mother ego.No chance for mother's guilt!!!!

want to say so many things...lack words.better we will go throgh the comments in the post we have started with.Someone has expressed it well towards the end.8th comment.And about my mother...Another day.

reponse to sudeep

this is in response to sudeep's post on mothers.
i liked it so much. i have always felt like a mother trying to curb her insanity for the child, which made me a more insane mother i suppose. here is short film idea, i always had, and which i still want to realize. let me share it with sudeep and others in response to his note on motherhood

---
sounds and sights of apartment life
alone apartment
mother and kid

they are happy
they are playing
and they are playing
and they are playing

sounds and sights of apartment life
the alone apartment

slowly, gradually,
the mother face changes
it is no more tender,
loving
or gentle

she looks at the child
with her new mad mother face

the child screams
she runs after the child
the child runs screaming too

cut to apartment sights and sounds
cut back to apartment alone

the mother and child again
and they are happy
they are playing
and playing and playing

(i hope this will make more
sense visually)

the "beautiful word" mother

[This is the post I promised in comment to Jenny's "Mother India". This was written more than two years back and appeared originally on my Sulekha blog [link].

Things have changed after I wrote this. I hope to write a "sequel" (sequels seem to be hot these days) soon. My mom had a stroke last month, second one in about thirteen months' time. She's in the hospital. My father is also more or less stuck at the hospital because someone has to be there.]


What I Learnt from Mom
------------------------------

My mother has gone insane.

My father says so. My brother says so. Many others say so.
A couple of days back, my brother wrote to me saying that she has a strong desire to stay with him at any cost, and said he's running from home.

I wasn't surprised.

Like all other mothers, our mother fed us, clothed us, cared for us and raised us. She also taught at a primary school.

While my father, like all other fathers, enjoyed being the family man, party worker, union leader and press reporter, along with a bit of teaching. He was an important person in the town, while my mom didn't have any say either at home or outside.

It is not that she detested social respect. She enjoyed it whenever she got a taste of it. Most of the time, in an alarming manner. Because she wasn't used to getting any kind of admiration for the person in her, as opposed to what is expected of her as a wife and as a mother. There are rare moments when she shares with us the dreams that she had as a young girl, how she used to do well in sports, and how her friends and teachers admired her.

We quarreled with mom when the food got late. We never even bothered to find out what is involved in getting our meals on the table. All we know is that "mummy ka haath ka khana" is supposed to be the best. Yes, like all mothers, she too lived for others. Which meant her husband and children. So it doesn't come as a surprise if she asks for my brother's life in return. Or mine. Or my father's.

A few days back I overheard someone in my institute lamenting to his foreign friends that in our country, nobody cares if a husband and wife got along with each other. And that his mother was much more attached to him than to his father. Apparently this was curbing his movement, and even the four years of his engineering away from home is turning out to be a torture for his mother.

I felt he was talking for a generation. How can one then blame the Saas who gets insecure when the power she had on her son faces a threat? My mother had also been very attached to me, but I consciously stayed away. Refusing to play the role of a son-- of letting her enjoy the power a mother has over her son. Because I thought it is better to try and change these things that get taken for granted than doing a self sacrifice. My brother believed otherwise, and he kept trying to make a pretty family picture until he reached a point where he couldn't take it any more. I am now writing this piece as a Mother's day gift to my mom.

My friend's mother called the other day and said that her husband gets insecure with every social relationship she develops. And he wakes up in the night and starts weeping if she is not at home even for a day. My poor father also goes into a low if mom is not home. I find it sad that we men grow up without learning to cope with our emotions. It is very convenient for us to hold someone else responsible for our emotional well-being always. Be it mother or wife.

After she retired, my mom used to attend some events of her interest but now she doesn't, because dad doesn't like it. But he used to be out for days during our childhood. That is accepted. Caring for children and raising them is anyway mothers' job. Naturally, when it becomes difficult for her to stay at home without any exposure to the outer world, she tries to find a life in her children.

Some say city women are better off. But seeing them manage the pressures of their career along with the job of taking emotional care of the husband and children, I don't buy it any more.

I learnt from every mom that all moms are insane. Some succeed in keeping it to themselves, some within the four walls of the family.

A recent survey placed mother as the most beautiful word in English language. I learnt from my mom that the beauty of that word comes at the cost of a life. And this cost adds up to nearly half the population of the world.

This mother's day, talk to your mother and find out the price that is being payed for our convenience and our irresponsiblity.

[This was written in the first week of May when rediff, as part of their mother's day celebrations, invited the readers to tell them "what you learnt from mom". They said they'd publish selected entries on "Get Ahead". Rediff didn't carry this write-up.]

mother india

actually in india mothering happens at different levels.
working class working women's mothering
sometimes amounts to making the child go to sleep
beside toilets and garbage pits and on top of cement sacks
and cowdung heaps

some have told me that they lock up children
as young as three year old bfore going for work -
they have no creches and no support.

i want to make a documentary and there,
i want to document at least some of the terrible
stories i know, and the survival that came slowly after....

this happens especially in the cities
where most working class women are displaced
and they r caught in floating nuclear family units...

in the case of middle class working mothers
most of the motehring is done by grandmothers...
this i want to understand and record

and lastly creches
suddenly in cities, creches are growing as
fast as internet cafes
u now see new boards
like "babies from one month old accepted"!

i too thought that the minute my daughter
turns one and a half, i will leave her in a creche
and get back to work but as part of trying to
make her accustomed to the creche, i had to
stay in the creche and there i experienced
what creches in india are..

in this particular creche there were two underpaid,
overworked, sad, depressed and higly frustrated
ammas or ayahs, who has so much work to do at
home that they are literally sleeping or otherwise
screamng at the children.

lonely desperate clingy children
bewildered by the sudden change
and seperation
are left to the mercy of these women
who are without mercy themselves

i decided i will not let my daughter
grow up in this atmosphere of sorrow
and thus i became a stay at home mother!

and almost spoiled the normal flow of my career -
i had this choice as my husband has a govt job
i am sure many mothers see this and still leave
their children behind with breaking hearts

i wish there will be more child care facilites
for working class women
in bastis/slums - NGOs usually don't think of this -
i also wish that middle class women woudl do something
to change the shape of midldle class creches...

my contribution i hope will be as a study first and then
a documentary...