Mother's Day celebration - 2011

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All day long, since last two days, people have wished each other mother’s day. Two days before the big day a message was posted on friend's profile that said "In honor of Mother's Day let's change our profile picture to a picture of your Mother and keep it there till May 9th.I did and so have several others. If you will and like the idea, please repost as your status, so everyone gets the message and see how many Beautiful Mothers we can get on Facebook." It was a nice thought and I quickly added my mom's picture on my FB. The face-book was full of mothers’ picture and it seems quite nice to see all them on every friend’s profile.

I am not sure when Indians started celebrating this day; I don’t remember celebrating this day when I was in my teens or in early twenties. I don’t even remember buying my mom any gift or flowers to show my appreciation. When did this day become a day to celebrate in India? When did this idea travel to India?

On Google search it's said that Mother's Day was first suggested in the United States by Julia Ward Howe in 1872 as a day dedicated to peace after the Franco Prussian War. The holiday gained its popularity majorly due to the efforts of Anna M. Jarvis, who began a letter-writing campaign to garner support for its celebration.

I became aware of this day when I migrated to Spain. “Dia de Madre’ is the big day in Spain and is celebrated with much affection. The streets are full of shoppers and people get busy buying flowers and gift for their mom. In every coffee shop you see the bond, the glimmer, the affection. When I lived with my brother’s family, we would buy gifts for my mom and brother’s children would buy gift for their mother, while yours truly received none. (not even a tiny rose), my nephew waited for aunt's day so that he could buy me a gift too and often questioned why there was no 'Aunt's Day' to celebrate.

That is the pain of not mothering a child of your own. You remain an aunt to thousand kids but they have no reason to celebrate your existance.

You may have the best of qualities of bringing up your brothers’, sisters’ or cousins’ children, showering them with all the affection that you are capable of giving, by singing them nursery rhymes till your throat goes dry, inventing stories to keep them amused while their real mother is pampering herself with a spa, or listening to their sob stories when they are unable to sleep and are sharing your bedroom because their parents' privacy is more important, sometimes you may have even spent your extra cash on that brat for a computer-game which his mother had refused to buy for him, but on mother’s day it is strictly ‘real biological mother’ and even if they wished you with a soft peck on your cheeks, it will be out of politeness, but it just doesn’t seem real.

I visited my sister on mother's day and her unmarried sister-in-law complained that her brother’s sons failed to bring her any presents and that all her life she has doted on them but still the children only remember to get gift for their own mother. I told her to buy herself a gift instead of waiting for somebody to gift her. Expectation is the mother of bigger sin and the root cause of many disappointments. it is better to stand in front of a huge mirror and wish the hour of the day. The smile that reflect back at you is the true smile.

During the family chat with my cousins on blackberry, I off-handedly wished all my cousins ’A Happy Mother’s Day’ expressing the notion of how lucky they were to have children, my cousin wrote back these beautiful words which felt good to read. She wrote back “You don’t have to give birth to be a mother; you just need a heart that loves unconditionally, that’s when you are a mom, so here is to you, a woman with a heart full of love who mothers so may tender hearts and fill them with wisdom”

Yes it is true I have loved all the children, (I still do). I have enjoyed great moments with them, cooked their special meals, stayed up all night when they are sick (even wiped their runny nose) and have mothered them unconditionally but to expect them to wish me on this day, and to be disappointed if they fail to include me on this special day is like loving them ‘conditionally’.

CSAAM April 2011- 'Unsafe World'.

“Don’t ever get married, Maria” said Annie to her sister after her first wedding night, “All men are dogs, a real crazy dogs! They suck the life off you. I feel dirty all over and I have taken bath twice since morning.”

Maria glared at her, letting the words seep in, she had never wanted to get married, not then, for she was quite young. In fact, she had decided long ago that she would never ever get married. But listening to her sister talk about her lawful husband like that seemed so wierd. Were men so violent with their wives too? She had been afraid of men for many years now. Each time, any boy/men had tried to talk to her, her heart would skip a beat, she would feel the heat under her ear-lobes, on her cheeks and a current of chill pass through her bones, she would try to find some ways to escape, making an excuse to walk out, or else shift his attention to some other interesting stuff. She could never take a compliment in her stride, especially not from men; she knew men had only one thought in their mind and that all the conversations would finally lead to sex.

During her school years too, she was a loner and had a very low self esteem, she hated long lunch breaks during which while her school friends laughed and played, she would prefer to sneak down to the nursery section of the school and watch the tiny tots in their activities. Children were real time-pass and they gave her all the pleasure and happiness, she believed that only children’s smiles were innocent and pure; the adult world was too cruel for her to adjust.

Nobody had told her about good/ bad touch when she was barely five years old. With father always in and out of hospitals, mother was too occupied nursing and taking care of the house. “Go out and play, there is too much work to do, you are making too much noise at home, go to the stairway and play out there.” Her mom would scream each time she took out her dolls to play.

So, most of her time she played on the stairway which had long veranda, enough space to run and scream and came home only to eat meals or to sleep, there were four more girls of her age in the same building, with whom she would play and they were her friends. They would play hide-n-seek, or slide down the railings of the stairway or walk down to the building compound to play some out-door games. The building had many men visitors. They were dhobis, watchmen, postmen, plumbers, hawkers, electrician, etc. with whom they often inter-acted. Some of them would offer lollipops to them and then sit with them on the staircase and relate to some expressive fairy tales or songs. The five-years-old never understood that good touch from a bad touch and thought it was the part of the game.

A game that affected their performance at school and they were listed as ‘duffers’ and ignored by teachers who had no patience with them. The teachers punished them for their stupidity and their inability to understand simple explanations during school lessons.

When Marie’s father passed away, they moved away from that neighborhood and migrated to another town. She never went back to meet those friends, never had an opportunity to keep in contact with them. But the fear of strangers clung on in the Meta of her life and subconsciously, she developed the hatred for men.

“All men are like that only” she said to her sister, Annie.

PS:

World is unsafe, especially for girls who are little and don’t understand good/bad touch which comes to haunt them later in life as it shapes their life to adjust in the ‘perfect’ world. Read the bloggers’ stories, survivor’s stories and advice from experts who have come together under one umbrella to talk openly during this Child sexual abuse Awareness month.

more resources on Child abuse at
Sexual abuse in India
Enfold Proactive health trust 
Child protection in India
Practical advice to parents
Centre for prevention and healing of sexually abused child

Comfort Zone

During my visits to one of the blogs, I came across the woes of the blogger who complained that worldclass T3 is built to welcome the visitors of Common Wealth Games and he was wondering why the station like VT, which handles more than 2 million commuters are given a raw deal.

He then spoke of a lady who was picking up the garbage with two pieces of cardboard and was not even given a something better to pick up the trash.

This sets me thinking. Some people are used to doing things which is most convenient for them and giving them something better is not going to make any difference to them, they might discard that fancy better stuff or even sell them off and continue to do what they are comfortable.

Don’t believe it?

I have this fruit seller who visits me regularly, climbing up two floors to give me his service. The other day he came to sell apples. I wanted half kilo but he had no 500gms-weight. He weighed one kilo apples and then distributed equally into two plates of the scale to give me my half kilo.

Clever!!

But silly me, I asked to buy half-kilo-weight to avoid this problem and he said it cost Rs40. I gave him money to buy one, thinking it will be nice if he had a proper way to measure his fruits.

The next time he visited me, I asked him if he had bought one, he still hadn’t. He said he had not yet found time to go to purchase it.

It has been four months now and he has still not bought it. He is comfortable weighing the fruits the way he is used to.

I want my money back. I feel cheated.

And since, I ask him whenever he knocks on my door, he has stopped visiting me. No more door service for me. Haaha!!