My random thoughts on Mother's day weekend:
Celebrating mothers everywhere: single mothers included
A very Happy Mother's Day to all of you: the women who have worked hard to raise children and their supportive families. Some women may disagree with the second half of the statement. Many may be legally or effectively single mothers soldiering on with parenting responsibilities after being excluded from the crowd and relegated to the fringes of society. To these mothers I say: the tough get going when the going gets tough. It's an aphorism I learned as a kid, and it has helped me live my life on my terms.
What if you have never had a loving mother?
All over the world, children grow up without a loving mother figure. And it does not matter if your birth mother is alive or not. It's whether you received that special warmth and how it has affected your ability to nurture your child. What do you feel on Mother's day? Anger? Loneliness? Forgiveness?
Mothers and sons: how should daughters feel about mothers day?
Growing up in India, we did not have a specific day to celebrate mothers. Mothers were revered in general, especially by sons in Hindi movies.
In real life too, I noticed mothers were openly partial to their sons. I wondered if that would be so if their daughters brought in dowry and not sons. If a family had to pay money to get their son married off, would they have rejoiced as much?
It helps to have a Goddess to pray to: God is not always a man
In Hinduism, devotees pray to Goddesses for beneficience. Goddess Lakshmi for wealth, Goddess Saraswathi for knowledge and Goddess Durga as the mother Goddess. And it has nothing to do with feminism. It's been this way for tens of thousands of years.
What about evil mothers?
Call it history or mythology, Hindu texts have several examples of evil women as mothers too.
Here are two examples:
1. Kaikeyi: Lord Ram is one of the most venerated Hindu gods. Kaikeyi was his father's second wife. She had been fond of him, but as it dawned on her that her step-son's ascension to the throne would deprive her of her influence on the throne, she conspired to send him to the forest for 14 years while crowning her biological son. This is the inciting incident in the epic story of Ramayana, one of the two best known Hindu mytholgical and religious epic stories ( the other being the Mahabharata). The space is restricted to detail the disaster that unfolds. But you can find it easily online for those unfamiliar.
2. Lord Ayyappa's story: Lord Ayyappa is a popular god in India' southern state of Kerala. He was born out of a union between Lord Shiva and Mohini ( Lord Vishnu in the form of a desirable maiden). The childless king of Pandalam adopts the infant boy ( Ayyappan) he found on the river bank. As he grows of age, his step mother conspires to get rid of him. She sends him on a dangerous mission: to get the milk of a tigress. This she hopes would lead to the boy's death. Not knowing that the boy is an incarnation of God, her ploy fails. Ayyappa returns with tiger's milk as his step mother desired, riding on the back of the tigress. The twist in this story is that Ayyappa punishes all women of child bearing age from entering the shrine dedicated to Ayypappa atop the Sabari hills.
And yes, dads do it too. But that is for another time. If you are curious, look up King Dhritharashtra, the blind king whose devotion to his son led to the horrific battle of Kurukshetra in the epic of Mahabharata.
As a mother, may your motto be: I will do my best by doing what is right for humanity. By allowing my offspring to grow to its full potential. Not by assuming my child is the best but by giving it my best. It's a hard thing to do. But as these enduring tales have shown us, securing our kid's future by ANY means possible can perpetrate evil.
So I leave this mother's day with one thought: do you as a mother ( or a parent) feel justified in doing anything if you think it will help your child? Even if it harms another? Even if your child is not the most deserving candidate for the title?
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