Wednesday, October 23, 2013

What my mother didn’t tell me


                          Growing up isn’t so crotchety when a doting mother takes to hard labor and see her off springs placed a little better than where she has been. Like every other home, there were differences of opinion, of judgments, the weekly “bellows burst” in the home I was born in. But then dinner times we had our share of laughters, our share of sharing the loaf of bread too.

My mother, a meticulous warm cent per cent pure housewife with the strength of a ten armed goddess held up the tent we were sheltered under. She was the door to entrance and exit checking, securing, locking, unlocking all that wanted an access to our layout. Thus most community gossips, society sweet- sour talks never found ways to our ears. There were always these words to guide us: “you mustn’t return home with trouble”. Trouble here meant complains or seeds of it from people we were hanging out with and people who were keeping a tab upon our growing up days. It isn’t easy for girls growing up in India with the kind of mindset spread across. But fortunately I could circumnavigate all the tangy talks. They quite became redundant in my busy life with no room for anything but my own little world with handpicked people to disperse the varied tinctures of emotion. One thing she taught was not to pay much heed to the idle mouth. 
Her words became our gospel.

                "There will always be someone to talk..there will always be someone to spittle loads of discouraging words on you…but you go on, paying no heed."

This pleasant misty world wasn't here forever. The second tenure in an unguided world just opens the door to a sultry clear world. It demands response. It prays for reaction. One’s sweet talk goes through uncountable scans, ifs and buts. Honesty here becomes silent fugitive. One’s politeness is the others’ reign.
Most people outside our mother’s nest would wait, watch and hunt for troublesome moments which bring us a step or two down from where we had been. It’s a world where we are being predated upon. All our education, our degrees fail when it comes to facing real- life challenges. It isn’t warm out there, its skin burning hot! It has very few incubators to pamper us and certainly has no red carpets spread to welcome our niceties, our boisterous belief and Jane Austenian ironed out principles. We are out and out absolutely on our own.
Falling, flipping, fidgeting and picking ourselves up come on a rotation. Each of which teach us the ways and means to be in and out of avalanche in front of us. They make us strong, they make us go- for- it people.
In no way am I saying that my mother failed to teach me, she just did not tell me that there was a dark, dim always challenging one’s wit and patience kind of world out there preying outside her honeycomb.
People in the open enjoy belittling the other. They salivate on fermented tell tale. They take variety as their spice of life far too seriously and those who cannot be a part are made the sitting duck.

My mother did not tell me... there were society scumbags I should prepare myself for. Instead of nurturing a coconut, she jealously guarded a rose from the sun. But that was my mother. Life did not as it does not.

Life is full of storms: fierce or dwarf and so are the giants and demons all over. We just need to armor ourselves with the warmth our mothers have wrapped us with and become seasoned beings if nothing more. Rowing the boat as expected till we are timed-out.


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