Skip to main content

Mothers are Ordinary Women. Remember that!

The hoopla for Mother's Day is on in full swing this weekend. Mothers are this, mothers are that, love your mom, gift her this, take her out for a meal, cook for her, gift her a vacation, and so on.

So many ads praising and eulogizing mothers, their role in our lives, their sacrifice, their contributions etc. etc. Then the offers of 20% off to mothers on everything ranging from dining, to apparel, to beauty products and spa sessions, from jewellery to even investment schemes!

Anyone pause to think what mothers are actually like? How about just considering mothers ordinary human beings, capable of making mistakes, falling, getting tired, irritated, crabby? 

Imperfect mothers/Ordinary mothers

How about a screaming, messy, imperfect woman, on whom motherhood was thrust, and who is now responsible for another human being against her wishes? Who wants to give everything up and just run away? Did she ask for the glory of motherhood?`

What about a mother struggling with indiscipline, rudeness and rebellion from her children? Who resorts to meting punishments to them that may seem harsh to outsiders? Is she a bad mom?

How about mothers who are obstinate, fiercely protective of their flawed children, whom society loves to hate? Who are blamed for raising monsters?

Will they be accepted? Will we just say, let her be? Will society stop glorifying motherhood? 

I do hope so....

Here is a story I wrote about two such ordinary mothers:

An Ordinary Woman - A Short Story


#MothersDay #MomsAreOrdinaryWomen #ImperfectMothers 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Does Mother Mary Really Come? You bet!

Prolific writer-activist-thinker Arundhati Roy's memoir, an ode to her mother's formidable personality, is cleverly titled, Mother Mary Comes to Me. Below the title is a picture of young Roy nonchalantly smoking a bidi. Irreverence, thy name is Arundhati Roy! At 372 pages, it is a tome, a sweeping saga that recollects both her mother's remarkable life, as well as her own. Is it a Memoir? Yes and no. Though the book title refers to their mother-daughter relationship, the book - at several junctures treats each one of them as independent and exclusive from one another. In fact, for a good part, her mother finds no mention at all, and the reader is engrossed reading about Roy's exploits and struggles through Architecture College, early attempts to find her vocation and calling, her dabbling with cinema, acting, scriptwriting; her romantic liaisons with the luscious JC, Sanjay, Pradeep et al. A life as extraordinary and unapologetic as Arundhati's mesmerizes in itself. ...

No Hopes for a Happy New Year

It's that time of the year again. When yearly round-ups are done diligently. Lists made, everyone sits down and assesses hits and misses. You tick off the "achieved goals" from your list. Make resolutions to fulfil the ones not yet surmounted. But I am doing something different. I am taking stock of my setbacks, my disappointments, the let-downs this year. I have absolutely zero expectations from the next year. Why? Because its useless to expect anything that I can't control. And since any chance of better days seems very unlikely, I am collecting the bits of my sanity to somehow trudge along the rest of my time on this planet. Why am I being such a kill-joy, you may ask? Well, not out of choice, certainly. What the world and my country, the air I breathe, the people I mix with, have become, all contribute to my rock-bottom expectations.  1. I am terrified, scared of what my country and its people have become. This wasn't the country I grew up in. It seems as if l...

The Sadness Within Us

A curious phenomenon has taken place over the years. Technology has advanced in leaps, modern medicine has become far more effective, we can control pain and disease far better, mental health is getting due attention, there are more avenues for creativity and entertainment.  Yet.... We are no longer able to be really happy. We are a chronically unhappy people. Forever dissatisfied, never content. Always thinking about the past or the future, never enjoying the moment. Think about it. When was the last time you were really, truly, wholly happy? Blissful, joyful? You slog hard at office, get that deserved raise/promotion, party hard to celebrate, and yet at the end of the day, a hollowness creeps in. An emptiness, a feeling of futility. You have a grand wedding - its the stuff Instagram dreams are made of. Your sweetheart looks like a million bucks with the latest designer lehenga, you yourself are spruced up, your family and friends are beaming, the event is going on swimmingly. Yet...