May 08, 2008

There were mothers like Mother Teresa who demonstrated what it means to be a mother to the world. Then there is the mother who is looking for ‘young, fresh’ girls for her 35-year-old bald son, scrutinising every centimetre of them like a butcher scrutinises a goat before he beheads it.

People all over the world celebrate Mother’s Day this week, commemorating and honouring motherhood in general and mothers in particular. The practice is not new, for mothers have been honoured ever since motherhood was recognised -–– since time immemorial.

The Ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians all honoured their mothers in some way or another around the Vernal Equinox or autumn. Motherhood has not only existed for as long as mankind has, but even prior to that in the garb of Mother Earth or Mother Nature.

However, one wonders, whether putting the responsibility of motherhood on the shoulders of women was a blessing or a curse. One cannot help but wonder why women were chosen for the job? Why give her the highest place among all other relations in the family? Why is there a heaven under their feet, and all the peace in the world in her arms? One wonders whether it was all a conspiracy to begin with, for the reality of motherhood seldom matches the expectation.

Women are the mothers of the society. It may be a man’s world but it is definitely a woman’s society, for she gives birth to it. In this context, women have exceptional powers. As they give birth, they are not only blessed with motherhood but also given the gargantuan responsibility of raising a human being, or even seven or eight human beings in the Pakistani context of things, where biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.

On the one hand, a mother is a person who seeing four pieces of cake when there are five people, promptly announces she never did care for cake, conversely, she is the person who seeing there is one piece of cake for her two children, pushes the plate in front of her son instead of dividing it in half for both her son and daughter. The fault doesn’t lie with the mother, it lies with the woman, and how she was raised by another woman.

For an educated child, the formative period for building character is at home, and the mother is the queen of that realm. She is the creator of the soul, the sculptor of the mound of clay, the painter of the blank canvas -- she is a mother who gives birth to another. Then again, every woman is not a mother, but every mother is a woman, and a mother may be superhuman, but a woman is as human as human can be; and humans do falter.

While we, the future mothers of the world, celebrate motherhood along with the rest of the world let’s take a moment to realise that it’s not easy being a mother.

Mothers come in as many shapes and sizes as just about anything else in the world. There were mothers like Mother Teresa, who defined motherhood and demonstrated what it means to be a mother to the world, doing justice to womanhood as well as motherhood. Then there is the mother who is looking for ‘young, fresh’ girls for her 35-year-old bald son, scrutinising every centimetre of them like a butcher scrutinises a goat before he beheads it.

There was Marie Curie who even after losing her husband, worked stoically and created a world of her own with her daughter and work. She is, to date, the only Nobel Prize winning mother of a Nobel Prize winning daughter –– Irène Joliot-Curie. Then there is the woman who beats and locks up her 16-year-old daughter, accusing her of being immoral and shameless, shreds her pants with scissors and forces her into marriage with a man twice her age only because she insists on studying further.

There is Bilquis Edhi who embraces newborn girls that people leave in the jhoola outside Edhi Centre, feeds them, raises them, and educates them even though they’re not her blood, and then there is the mother who sends her daughter back to her in-laws to save the honour of her sons and husband even though her in-laws threaten her daughter with death, and keeps sending her back until her mother-in-law sets her on fire, accusing her of being a witch.

Every time, it’s a woman against another, for it is all about women, it has always been and it will always be. A mother is a saviour and a tyrant, a healer and a butcher, a homemaker and a schemer; she resonates and discriminates, preaches and aggravates, builds and destroys, for the society grows and develops inside her womb and it’s more in her hands than in a man’s.

Like they say, with great power, comes great responsibility. We are the mothers of the future. Though it is excruciatingly difficult to change the way a society thinks and has been thinking for centuries, however, it is not impossible. It is upon us to decide what sort of mothers we want to be and what sort of mothers we want to raise. The burden of the future society rests on our shoulders, and in the end it all comes down to this. Would you divide the cake in half? Happy Mother’s Day!