'God
could not be everywhere, so he created mothers.' Reading a popular
quote like this makes me feel like yet another nail has been driven
into the cross mothers have been made to bear for centuries. Some men
have irritably responded to this observation by saying, 'It’s true
that you can never make a woman happy. Assign divinity to her and she
would still find a reason to crib.'
Well,
to begin with, women don’t want to be ‘assigned’ a status. All
they want is to be able to breathe free as people. Since women are
often accused of substituting logic with sentiment, let us try to
view the argument in as quantifiable a manner as possible.
Given:
Motherhood=Godhood
To
prove:
A straight-backed chair is more comfortable than a pedestal.
Proof:
These are a few tasks gods are supposed to perform:
-to give
what is asked for, without asking back.
-to remember that to
err is human, to forgive divine; to never falter, to always
forgive.
-to never speak/complain, despite what you are forced
to take/is flung upon you . . . incessant chanting like the buzzing
of mosquitoes into your ears, sticky sweets, canker-ridden flowers,
the nauseatingly strong smoke of incense sticks.
-to get
used to being taken for granted, to stay forgotten until you are
needed.
As a corollary, the mother-goddess must also perform
the above-mentioned functions. Maybe it should be made mandatory for
all mothers to undergo acrobatic training, so that cakewalks like
these can be managed with perfect ease. Women are damned if they
do it and would still rot in limbo if they do not. QED.
My
aunt in Bihar once disapprovingly told me of a woman who had reported
her son to the police. The son was an old alcoholic and used to beat
up his mother regularly. This act of hers turned the whole
neighbourhood against her, who failed to fathom the mystery of the
‘kind’ of mother she was. As if they acknowledge the existence of
more than one kind! Would the mother’s ‘forgiving and forgetting’
her son’s dastardly behaviour really have been the best thing to
do?
One doesn't intend to chip away at the bond that exists
between a mother and her child. But is constant self-effacement the
only way to prove this love? If a mother wants to partake of the
small pleasures of life, it is often seen as a mark of disloyalty
towards her role as a giver. Once she has slipped into this part, at
no times must she endeavour to shed this suit and live as just
another being? And this, when men often cry foul saying that women
should ask for what they want, instead of expecting men to understand
all their wishes.
Motherhood might mean fulfilment for a
number of women. But why can’t other women be let alone to find
this completion in whatever else they like? Why should anyone else
take decisions about what use we put our body to? It is pitiable when
women who have entered the state of motherhood grow to be derisive of
other women. They are seen as devoid of all emotions, irreverent
about the importance of a ‘family life’. These are perceived not
just as lesser gods but also as lesser women, the ones who would
never be ‘complete’. It is this attitude which is mirrored in the
vehement moral-religious furore raised against abortion rights.
'Vamps' in soaps and films are condemned if they do not want to
be mothers, while the heroine is ready to die or have her spouse
marry another woman as long as the house gets populated with a pack
of robust cherubs.
Under such pressure, even those women who
are not ready to meet the demands of motherhood yield and are then
left to make regular guilt trips. Golda Meir remarks, 'At work, you
think of the children you have left home. At home, you think of the
work you have left unfinished.' That working women make incapable
mothers is another bizarre, much-peddled myth. Such stereotypical
pressures and the accompanying bitterness, on a few occasions, comes
through in their relationships with the rest of the family, including
the child. Or, as happens more often, there is a rise in the level of
expectations she has from the family for which she has put the rest
of her life on hold, which they are naturally unable to satisfy. It
is not coincidence when women in these situations undergo nervous
disorders and clinical depressions.
In The Second
Sex,
Simone de Beauvoir has rightly identified the problem, 'The woman who
enjoys the richest individual life will have the most to give her
children and will demand less from them . . . ' So should ‘mum’
really be the word of the day?
