My Person of Everything

In this society of ours each one is expected to satisfy certain criteria to earn the respect of others. Irrespective of rich or poor, North, South, West or East, Hindu, Christian or Muslim, there is a checklist forced on us. Men- they do not have a choice but to be the bread winner of the family. Women on the other hand, are pictured different. Live within the boundaries that our ‘tradition’ lays, decent education in the ‘modern’ days, to get married and have children. Since the very beginning of time, ‘to have children’ is considered a blessing.

Somehow our society is intolerant to the childless. Most of the time men escape the stinging words of those around. It’s usually women who are forced to live through this devastating situation.

They are considered unlucky, disgrace, a symbol of sorrow and despair. Regardless of what a woman has achieved, if she cannot bring forth the next generation; she is null, void. This life of a woman is nothing less than experiencing hell. She has to quietly bear the suffering, fake a smile and continue to carry out her everyday chores.

This life of hell is what my mother experienced for 15 years. After she was married, just like any other woman, she longed for motherhood. But it took a decade and a half for it to happen. These 15 long years couldn't have been easy.

She had to ignore the disgusting stares of those in the family, with a harden heart hear the words of the doctors when they said ‘You will never have a child’, live without a hold in life and struggles every minute which deep down her heart still remains unerased.

I came as an answer to the numerous questions and a source of joy after all the years of hardships. What could be more special to hold me for the first time, her little one, her own. From then to now, her world is spun around me, her dreams became mine and mine are hers. I’m 21 but the bond between us was created 15 years before I first saw the world. The divine bond that unknown to anybody else. 

Certain qualities are taught while few others are inherited. To be tolerant, to be humble, sometimes to let go and sometimes to be a get getter- these weren't taught to me, I acquired rather inherited from her. She has been everything that I could ask for- mentor, critic, teacher, friend and above all my first expert, my mom.