The
first editorial in
Anandabazar
Patrika, Sunday 22
nd September edition, was as follows (the
translation is mine):
“Mothers and lies
Worship of mothers is a perennial
thing. It is taken for granted that a mother would hug her child to her breast
and gladly make any sacrifice for its sake. A child may be a black sheep, a
mother never, she cannot be. No doubt there is some truth in this notion, but a
great deal of blind faith and melodrama also work to keep it alive. A stern
look at reality will show us a lot of mothers who make mincemeat of their
wards’ love lives and sex lives, or otherwise perpetually cramp their personal
space and limit their individual growth as human beings. In most of the cases
of ‘honour killings’ that have been reported in recent times, a mother has been
either directly involved, or given her full consent to the horror. Giving birth
is merely a biological ability: it does not by itself glorify anybody
spiritually. To raise a child well and educate him to live a valuable life is
no mean task, and to do that one has to work hard at evolving into a good human
being first. Mothers all around us incite their children to win the ratrace
even by hurting the interests of their friends, and drive deep into them the
disgusting habit of blaming everybody but themselves for their woes. And in
most cases they inculcate this kind of meanness because they ‘love’ their
children. Just as many animals enthusiastically devour some of their young so
that the rest might have a better chance of survival. A certain species of
eagle watches quietly while the stronger of its fledglings bully and kill the
weaker ones. The panda bear mother, if it gives birth to twins, nurtures one
and abandons the other. Perhaps natural selection favours this kind of
arrangement, but surely the babies that are rejected and killed do not find
much truth in the adage that a mother’s love is the most wonderful thing in the
world!
Recently an American wrote this
obituary shortly after the death of his mother: ‘Six of her eight children are
alive, whom she subjected to every sort of persecution all her life…on behalf
of all the children she made part of her unholy, malice-driven life, I am
happily celebrating her demise, and hoping that next time round she might be at
the receiving end of the same kind of barbarous cruelty and humiliation.’ This
particular mother might have been an aberration, but even ordinary mothers all
around us beat their children, mock them harshly, drown them in the pit of self-loathing
by comparing them endlessly with others to their disadvantage, obstructing
every attempt they make to find a little happiness in their own lives, and
drive myriad little needles so deep into their souls that the wounds rankle
lifelong, and destroy all possibility of their living decent lives of their
own. Many mothers are certainly good mothers; however, it is equally true that
many of them are cruel, abusive, or at least totally indifferent to their
children. On the internet you can find blogs titled ‘I hate my kids’; there are
even ‘groups’ of such like-minded mothers. All relationships can be the cause
of either joy or sorrow: the mother-child relation is no exception to this
rule. Camus created quite a stir by asserting this unpleasant truth in The
Outsider. In that novel it was the son who was unbothered about his mother’s
death. One rarely meets mothers who are indifferent to their children, even
abusive in dealing with them, in literature. But one does in reality.”
S.C.: To the above, I shall add only that I
do not personally think this is a gender thing. It’s only that the indiscriminate deification of mothers gets to me sometimes, seeing that there are lots of
fathers who try very hard to be good parents, and lots of mothers who don’t.
The crucial point is that so few people work at being good parents, so few even
know that it has to be worked at, or
that it is such hard work: and yet, especially in this country, somehow manage
to raise children who feel it is their ‘duty’ to feel love and respect and be
attentive to their parents’ needs lifelong, including the need to be shielded
from all criticism within the family and without: my parents, my parents über alles. Also, for the sake of variety I suppose, there are parents who try very hard, and eventually get kicked in the face for their pains... it is indeed the best of all possible worlds.
