Mother, O my dear mother !

Mother, O my dear mother !      

                            --Raj Bahadur Yadav

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Mummy!  O mummy!  I heard my 26 year old son calling out his mother from the bedroom. On not getting an immediate response from her, he repeated,"Mummy, O mummy!" When I asked him,"What is the matter, my son? Can I help you?" He replied,"No papa! You cannot do it!"  Meanwhile, his mother came rushing from the backyard of our house assuring him loudly,"Aayee beta! Abhi aayee"[ I am coming son, I am coming at once].My heart leapt to my mouth, watching my only son, Monu, groaning in severe pain, struck unfortunately by rheumatoid arthritis,a chronic inflammatory disorder. On seeing her, he demanded," Where are my clothes? Have you  placed the steel chair in the bathroom which I use while having my bath?" The doting mother replied," Go now and take bath my son! I have placed everything in order there."

                                        The filial bond between my son and his mother reminds me of my own dear mother. She was a tall and well-built peasant woman. We were fated never to meet again after she fell ill and died in 1967. My grandmother used to narrate her tales of deep affection for me," In the mornings, she gave you a bath in fresh water drawn from our brick-lined well , massaged your whole body with mustard oil and applied home made "kajal"[kohl]  in your eyes. She added carefully a dot of "kajal" on the left side of your forehead in order to ward off "buri nazar"[bad glance]. Once you fell very sick. Your father said, " I am going to call the "hakeem"[ an expert in using herbs]  to treat him". But your mother insisted,"  I am not ready to take any risk. You must take my son to a good hospital in the  city. In those days, nobody owned a scooter or motorcycle in the village. Your father  hired a "tanga"[horse-cart] to reach the "Swaroop Rani Nehru Hospital" in Allahabad. In reflective moments, my heart cries out,"Mother,O my dear mother!"

                             

                                 When I became a college student  in late seventies, I read Maxim Gorky's  novel,"The Mother[1906]" for the first time. In those days, this novel hogged  a lot of limelight. It was quite common among students to quote Gorky," Only mothers can think of the future-- because they give birth to it."  Gorky was born in Nizhny Novgorod in 1868  and became an orphan at the age of nine. He must have missed his own mother a lot all his life. The novel focuses on the role women played in the struggle of the Russian working class on the eve of the aborted revolution of 1905. Pelageya Nilovna Vlasova is a poor widow of a factory worker. Her husband was a heavy drunkard. She knew nothing but beatings and constant terror of being beaten up. Her  son, Pavel Vlasov also follows in the  the footsteps of his father and starts drinking. Nilovna feels alarmed. But her deep affection for her son brings about a big change in him.He abandons drinking. One day, he returns home with a bundle of books and talks about social and political change..From an impoverished and brutal individual, Pavel gets transformed into  the representative voice of the poor and exploited  factory workers because of a great mother like Nilovna. She taught him," You will not drown the truth in the seas of blood".