Epitome of patience…

During my 10+2 days when I was preparing for entrance tests to secure a seat in Engineering colleges, my mother woke up every day at around 4AM. She made coffee for me to help me stay awake. She returned frequently from her bedroom to make sure that I am still studying. She kept track of how many hours I slept and ensured that I got undisturbed hours of study. She made sure that I maintained energy levels that sustained my long hours of studies. This went on for months and years. It was the same case when my older siblings were growing up. I noticed it only when it was my turn. Several months of my efforts ended in somewhat a failure. I got a rank in the entrance test, but that was not good enough to get into a government college where the fee is far less than what it is in a private college. I apologized to my mother without using the word ‘sorry’. I was too proud to say sorry and she did not expect me to say sorry anyways. I told her that I will take up some other career other than engineering as we may not be able to afford the costs of a private engineering college. That is when I saw the real side of my mother. She gave me a smile that I will never forget. It was an ‘I can’t believe you are so naïve’ smile.  Or it was perhaps a ‘you think we have no sacrifices left to be made for your education’ smile. She told me it is not my concern to pay for my education. Of course I should be concerned. We were nine kids in the family and only God(and my parents) knows how we managed to scrape through. To this day we are still not aware of many of the sacrifices made by my mother and father to ensure that we all got our degrees.

It is said that God could not be everywhere and therefore He created mothers. It is as true in my life as it is many other lives, including perhaps your own! I am aware of so many mothers who made supreme sacrifices to get their kids educated. They all know the value of education. There are also several instances when a mother sacrificed her career options for the sake of her children’s education. If not for these wonderful mothers many of us would have ended up being a burden, of beastly kind, on the society. They taught us the values needed for a righteous living. They taught us how to stand on our own feet and be a responsible person. In fact there is nothing that they taught that did not help us being what we are today.

Our national song vande mataram extols our nation as an equivalent of a mother. There are many Sanskrit slokas that heap praises on the mother. The words motherland and mother tongue show the importance mother plays in the life of a nation. Manu Dharma Shastra, the first law book of the Hindus, exhorts thus:  ‘yatra naaryastu pujyaMtE tatra ramaMtE dEvataaH’ – where women are respected and worshipped there the gods shower abundance of happiness. The Sanskrit verse ‘maatru dEvO bhava, pitru dEvO bhava…’ describes mother as equivalent to God before touching upon father and guru as equivalents of God in our lives.

Alas a mother was at one time a girl. As a society we exhibit, unabashedly, double standards when it comes to dealing with women. A woman’s early life starts as a girl child. Her parents and relatives whisper to each other ‘Oh how nice it would be if it were a boy’. As she grows up and if there is a scarcity of resources, the axe falls on her education. The boys in the family get a preferred treatment. She grows up to be a woman who readily makes all sacrifices, yet again, to ensure that her kids are educated. She shows the patience that is equivalent to the patience of mother earth. Her patience is her most important attribute and she truly is an epitome of patience…

As a society are we being fair to her? In the next post, let us look at some statistics on how we treat them. If we are to be really thankful to our mothers we must take a sincere look at how we treat other women in the society.