"The Good Mother"

“Motherhood” – a role which we have collectively epitomized as an ocean of unconditional love and care, and personified to unparalleled sacrifice and goodness. Probably it is for this lofty character that a mother is always standing in the court of opinions where judgements are constantly passed upon the efficiency of her job.

However, times have changed and the mother is no more the supremely sacrificing, innocent, simpleton lady. She is the all knowing, in-charge, clever mother who believes in putting herself at priority at times. But one thing that hasn’t changed is her position in the judgement box. And this became starkly clearer when I attended a session called “The Good Mother” with the very renowned Shobha De and Natasha Badhwar as panelists. The fact that there was such a session conducted corroborates its relevance without a doubt.

At the end of the session, there was a recently divorced lady who put forth this question to the panelists, “Ma’am, after living and trying to accommodate in an unhappy marriage for years, I finally decided to come out of it. Am I still a good mother?” She meant that she put herself before the consequences of a broken marriage for her daughter. And in having done so, is she right as a mother. This made me realize how much approval and validation we are looking for, while playing this very instinctive and natural role of motherhood.

I have been a mother for good eight years now and yes there are those amazing moments when you feel so accomplished not so much as a mother but a nurturer. When your kids show that unexpected innocent kindness or honesty or affection, you feel like you might be raising them right. But trust me those moments are hopelessly few when compared to the other ones. Because there are absolute times when a mother’s sanity is relentlessly kicked and bruised, her patience is slashed and slit, and every ounce of her good-naturedness is tried and trampled upon by her very adorable kids. And when she reiterates, the world around her is quick to frame opinions and express their uninhibited judgements upon her insensitive and callous ways of treating her child.

The mother tagging is rather the privilege of all generations including your own kids. For all the days in a year, if you need to tell the kids, “please change into your night clothes, it’s bedtime”, “please sit and eat your food on the table”, “wash your hands and feet after play”...and not on a single day do they do any of it at your first time request, at your second time instruction, at your third time desperation, the fourth time even an angel will yell. And then you hear a second voice, “Don’t be so impatient and impolite with the kids.” And you gape open mouthed like ...Huh? This second voice is not your own inner soul reprimanding you; it’s a third person’s take on your behaviour or your own kids shoving advice to you. Every time I scold my four year old munchkin, she makes me say sorry to her without exception.

I am in my late thirties, and so a lot of mothers or parents in my generation will relate to the fact that we had strict parental upbringing. And when I say strict, I mean you needed to pick up behavioural cues only by the eye movement of your parents. No words, only non-verbal cues. And there wasn’t any leeway to go wrong or you have had had it. So now when this older generation comments that you are being very hard on your kids, you are too stern with too many rules, I find it laughable. I mean, did you never scream at us, did you not slap us ever or threatened to lock us in the bathroom? So why these judgements when we are going through that same arduous task of raising kids.

I am by no means supporting that what’s wrong should continue in every generation or there shouldn’t be a change for better. But there’s more scope for understanding the situation than liberally announcing your opinions. It might look like what’s the big deal if somebody calls you a stern mother; it does matter or hurt because to the mother’s ears it sounds like you are a “monstrous” mother. And it is frustrating. Funnily, I have also observed that it doesn’t end at being insensitive, there is this huge baggage of being an under nourishing mother as well. The moment you birth your child, there is an inundating flood of food advice. About how you need to give almonds, raisins, walnuts, honey, tulsi, amla, even barley water, and on and on to that baby. And whatever you might be doing, there will always be a gap and need to go a step further for his better nourishment. In some cases the advices are an ongoing process no matter how old your kids have turned. 

  

I did attend a wonderful course on parenting and I wholeheartedly agree that as parents we do need to change some of our ways both in upbringing and dealing with our beloved kids. I try to be as mindful as I can but yes I fail often. But seriously you need to cut some slack to the poor yelling mother. People, it’s inevitable sometimes, almost ritualistic to scream in certain situations like, “switch off the bloody T.V.” or it never happens.  

The whole judgement thing is not about these seemingly trivial or routine matters. We as a population and tribe are prone to comparisons and judgements. There are all sorts of mothers, working mothers, home maker mothers, active mothers, lax mothers, liberal mothers, strict mothers, etc. When you hold your opinion or judge her as an individual she doesn’t mind it so much. But when somebody targets her role and her place as a mother or parent in her child’s life, it feels rancid. In all societies, there is paramount cultural pressure upon mothers to succeed as mothers. And under its pressure, we are constantly justifying ourselves or looking for validation.

At the end of the day, what matters as a mother is not how much or how little I scream or yank at my kids, but if I give them so much more love and security to fade away the memory and drown the noise of those screams? And despite seeming like a cranky virago of a mother, if my love reaches and is received by my kids’ eager hearts and it heals and nurtures them when it should, I think I might be a fairly good mother.    

The Story behind Your Being

Ever wondered, why do we call ourselves human beings and not homosapiens?

Sebastian Faulks is an accomplished British writer and reading his recent interview nudged my curiosity sufficiently. “Who we are” and “What we are”, are the two impertinent questions underlying the theme for most of his books, which he has endeavored to answer. Though I haven’t read any of his works, it prodded me to think of my own about it.  

It is conclusively rested that we are homosapiens, who chose to evolve superior in the Darwinian selection to create our niche. But what followed next is of real interest to me, the journey that made us call human beings from homosapiens. In this context, “Who and what we are”, is largely shaped by and is in relation to our surroundings.

Over the eons, we have zealously outperformed ourselves repeatedly, from the cave hunters to multicultural civilizations, from the modest discovery of wheels to Elon Musk’s space vehicles, from settling at the river banks to carrying our legacy to the peak of Mt. Everest, from hieroglyphics to sensory detective communication. This is an astounding, fantastical and overwhelming inheritance of human journey which has been passed down and shall continue to with all its social, economical, cultural and artistic entourage. However, in essence of the two underlying questions, we are most visibly and evidently so much more than our marvellous legacy.

It bamboozles me utterly to think how in the natural selection of our evolution, did we chance upon the stupendously intriguing and intricate faculties of emotions and mind to work upon. There is a constant juxtaposition of feelings and intellect that we all experience. And against the backdrop of this emotional and logical battle it is particularly relevant to answer who we are?  We are charlatans who play gimmicks of the mind and heart. And while trying to be tricksters, funnily, we so often get tricked by our own games not in the least realizing it.

Let’s consider a simple situation, say you had fallout in a relationship. All of us do. However, after that fallout, didn’t you expectantly wait for that one call which might make it right again? And all the while, while waiting didn’t you deceive yourself by repeating, “I don’t care a damn if he/she calls or not”. Well the fact is that you and I give the entire heck to hear that one beep of his message. This is exactly why I say we are charlatans. We aspire love and acknowledgement to the core but fear to admit it. And I haven’t researched but I believe that even the over-evolved humans like Einstein, Freud, Beethoven or Steve Jobs would have aspired as much love and respect as any common man does.

So who we are? We are simply creatures of love. We have established unflinching superiority as homosapiens but at the very crux of life we are no different than any other organism on this planet. A favourable environment of positivity and love affects every living organism in the same way be it homosapiens, animals or plants even water as famously claimed by the Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto. Having accepted that, shall I ask what are we? I think we are frightened love seekers. We seek what we lack. And the fact that we crave for so much love outside, implies we lack it so much within. But we are scared to accept this because it makes us feel incomplete and imperfect.

When we expand love from a personal perspective to the vast universal level, it is no longer limited to romantic or platonic love relationships. It can best be defined as an abstract feeling of goodness. The moment a fellow human’s act or gesture made you feel good, or yours did the same to him, it is an experience of love. And this definition holds perfectly true even on a personal basis. Love isn’t a reductionist potion of simmering egos or dependency. But yes at the current stage of our emotional evolution, it is an exchange of expectations. That’s how it works in the real world. Let’s not be unrealistic and think of it in a utopian spiritual scenario. As long as we can give and get love, I see it working well.  The only test in this exchange is that, the moment it loses its airy, buoyant and vibrant stimuli and begins to strangulate, the expectations need a check. Readjustment is tricky but not out of question. After all, our mental faculties have developed intelligently enough to work it out if we wish so.

The irony or the anticlimax as I might say of our evolution is that we evolved and progressed incredulously for almost nothing at the end.  From Neanderthals, to homosapiens, to human beings we wrote literature, poetry, songs, we created music, dance, drama, we invented gastronomy and technology. In our progressive giant leaps we have phenomenally indulged every sensory dimension of our existence. But when it really matters at the heart of being who we are, absolutely nothing of the above counts. What matters is the unspoken, untouched, intangible connect of love, which reaches another with the sheer blink of your eyes, sometimes even without that.