Mother...the word itself carries a multitude of expressions that say a lot unaided by any vocabulary.
Mother.....A love unparalleled, devotion unmatched….. yet most often not reciprocated even within close limits of equality!
Talking of parental love, I am reminded of a story of a young boy. A story that someone I cannot recall narrated to me a long time back........
This is the story of a young boy who hated his mother and would never talk of her to his friends. Her very existence was an embarrassment to him. Not only because they were poor and she did base jobs like cleaning and washing to bring him up. But more because she had only one eye!
He hated her, but she loved him!
She struggled to see that he goes to a good school, has enough to eat and wears tidy clothes. But he continued to hate her!
He grew up. He grew intelligent and fortunate. He got a good job to give him a comfortable life.
He left her......She continued to love him!
He found a sweetheart to keep him happy. He was blessed with lovely kids.
She continued to pray for his well being. And he continued to hate her!
She died a lonely death. He was informed .....but never came.
She had worked for a school. He was asked by the authorities to vacate her belongings. So he had to comply.
There wasn't too much his poor mother could leave behind. But a golden box at her bedside was a surprise!
A golden box.......? It seemed out of place amongst her sparse belongings that spoke of her abject poverty.
He opened it.
Wrapped up carefully in a muslin cloth were the little clay toys he used to make as a young boy.
He was surprised! He could not believe she had preserved them so lovingly for so many years! He was reminded of how he used to dream of being a sculptor one day. He envied the potters' wheel for he did not have one!
Today, he is an engineer. And he has always believed that the sculptor in him was dead.
The emotions that he was suddenly aware of, told him that the death he had imagined, had not yet come! They also told him, that someone has nurtured his lost dreams for two and a half decades.
Beneath.... were nicely folded pieces of paper which looked like letters ready to be posted.
And indeed they were letters!
He unfolded each of them, placed religiously arranged in the order in which they must have been written. Subconciously he thought, I need to leave this wretched place as soon as possible.
But he sat down to read.
Every word seemed to pierce through his eyeball, hurt somewhere deep inside his bosom and sink into his gut like a heavy stone! They were letters his mother wrote to him every year. Every year after he had distanced himself from her.
She wrote how much she missed the sight of her child and how her one eye oozed salty water. She wrote how often she prayed for his good health and fortune and how she rejoiced in his success. She wrote how she wished to see his wife and how she craved to hug his children. And then she wrote why these letters never reached him!
She knew that her letters would remind him of her existence and disturb his mind. She knew that when his wife and children would question he would not have an answer. She wrote that she knew her ‘One Eye’ has always embarrased him. She wrote that she wished that he read this letter and through this she wanted to apologise for the shameful life she has given him. She wrote how he had had an accident when he was a little child and how he lost his right eye. She wrote, it was then that she had to turn into that ‘One Eyed Woman’ so that her child could see the world with two eyes!
She wrote that she was Sorry.
