Is there such a thing as the evil eye and should you be afraid of it?

My father was a good man ......he was kind, gentle and helpful, but he had his doubts about ritual and was dismissive and thoroughly disparaging of superstition, godmen, and the cumbersomeness of religion. He cared deeply and tenderly for those close to him. How much he cared for those nearest and dearest to him really hit home the night he did something most unlike him - he turned to superstition as an answer to a problem for which he could find no other solution. That was the night my three month old collicky offspring brought the roof down with his three hour long non stop crying marathon! That was the night my father surprised me by telling my mother in dead earnest, "Do whatever it is you do to ward off the evil eye, do that ridiculous ritual, do something, anything to stop whatever is bothering the baby". His grandson was the most beautiful baby on earth and he could not bear to see him in some inexplicable and unstoppable pain.

Desperation and helplessness in the face of distress bring out the "nazar lag gayi" or "nazar utaro" instinct in us. In our fear that what we hold dear and close to our hearts is going to be harmed or destroyed, we blame the evil eye. In our our anger that our beautiful bubble of complacence has gone bust or might be about to be busted, we convince and flatter ourselves that people are casting an evil eye on us.

While my father's bowing to the "nazar utarna" ritual was a one off thing, an aberration (thank God), one for which he ridiculed himself the very next day when his grandson was his normal smiley, gurgling self again, there are those who really and truly believe in the evil eye and the potential harm it can do - think chappals and black dolls tied on the back of trucks, black dots smeared on the faces of cute chubby infants, nimbu-mirchi (lemon-green chilly) charms tied on shop entrances, among other crazy things.....

At the bottom of all of this is our supreme vanity, don't you think? In our vanity and self satisfaction, we presume that we have everything that everyone else covets. In our narcissism, our self-absorbedness, we fail to see that everything, every single thing in the world is relative - wealth, beauty, brains, good luck, good health - whatever we have, there's always someone who has more of it. So why would anyone cast an evil eye on us and not on those others who are better endowed than us? Why would anyone covet my wealth and not the Birla's or the Tata's millions?

Why do we never stop to think that the busting of our bubble is just the 'down' that must come after the 'up' in the endless cycle of ups and downs that define life? Why can't we see that what we assume to be the evil eye that has been cast upon us is just a Malthusian type of theory busy at work bringing balance back into a skewed world! Or as some would say, your bad karma from this life or an earlier one coming to bite you.....

Frankly, any explanation would be better than to be trapped behind the fear of the evil eye. I can't think of a more pitiable way to live than that. How liberating it must be to be able to say to oneself, "I am what I am, I have what I have, I have earned it without harming anyone, I am thankful for it, I value it, I cherish it, but I am humble in the face of it", and be able to enjoy it without any fear of it being taken away by the evil eye!

Of course, the part in bold font is the most important condition to enjoying this feeling of liberation, and is there anyone in the world who can truly satisfy it? And if not, then is the fear of the evil eye just good old guilt in addition to good old vanity. Something to ponder I guess.......

   

June 30, 2014, Flight AI - 047

Ok this is nothing if not blogworthy! So here goes....

It was the last day of work for me before my husband and I relocated to the place of his new assignment. I had just conducted the last workshop of my five year stint as a teacher trainer back home in India. What a memorable evening that was on my flight home to Delhi after the workshop in Kochi! It opened my eyes to many unexpected truths, big and small about myself and others!

After a completely predictable one hour delay (nothing out of the ordinary, nothing amiss......it was an Air India flight), as I finally boarded the aircraft, if I thought the state of disarray of the stewardess's saree, hair and makeup was unprofessional and visually distressing, in hindsight I think this was her way of preparing us for her near meltdown a while later! We took off after she had bullied, ordered, and shouted at me and my fellow flyers to straighten our seatbacks, fasten our seat belts, etc. She practically dumped the dinner trays in front of us hapless and meek victims. She would have thrown them at us like frisbees if she could have! Then suddenly just about an hour after takeoff, as dinner was coming to an end for most though not all of us, we heard her ask on the PA system if there was an EOD expert on board. There was a medical emergency on board and the stewardess from hell was asking if there was a doctor in our midst, and EOD referred to some special branch or degree or specialisation in the medical field. I thank the good lord above that that was what I and many others on board thought. To find out why I am grateful for our ignorance and misunderstanding of the situation read on...... It would spoil the fun (I can call it 'fun' now that it is over) if I gave it out just like that in a sentence or two!

I am not sure if the captain had asked her to make that announcement or if she was being proactive and taking the initiative of her own accord. Well, the announcement made, she hung up the PA apparatus and then came her quick downward slide into panic (at this stage thankfully only for her). Without warning she swiped the dinner trays off of the passengers' tray tables, surprising those who were only halfway through their meal, and almost yanked the cutlery out of the hands and mouths of some of them!

We could sense that we were descending and were perplexed. Our flight which had originated in Kochi and was headed to Delhi, was not due to land for over an hour more. What was going on? A young steward showing exemplary calm (again in hindsight - at that time I don't think any of us really appreciated his demeanor or brilliant handling of a difficult situation, because we did not know it was difficult!) in complete contrast to his much senior colleague, passed by me as he made sure everything was stowed away and secured. I asked him if we were landing. He answered in the affirmative. Then when I asked him why we were landing he said very politely but firmly "Let's not go into that right now ma'am". I asked the guy seated in front of me if he knew what was happening. Turns out he was an ex-Indian Air Force officer. He said EOD stood for Explosive Ordinance Disposal, he thought there was probably a bomb on board, which is why we were making an emergency landing, and that the stewardess from hell must have been out of her mind to make that announcement earlier! It is unimaginable the panic that would have ensued had this man not kept quiet or had any of the other passengers on board understood what EOD meant. As the plane touched down, the wonderful young steward briskly, yet calmly asked the passengers seated in the Emergency Exit row (Row 11 or 12 if I am not mistaken) to open the doors. The poor passengers had frozen with shock and terror at the implication of his request, so he once again calmly instructed them how to turn the handles to release the locks, and asked them to step out and evacuate the plane as soon as possible using the chutes which had inflated and opened up.

That's when I heard a little bit of screaming among the women passengers, many of whom were traveling with very young children and even infants but without their husbands, and saw a bit of jostling as everyone rushed for the same emergency exit. Once again the young steward quietly informed them that there were other exits further back as well as across the aisle, and that they should not all rush to the same one. Thanks to his composure, the screaming ended within seconds as people started evacuating.

I am pretty amazed at how calm I had felt in that moment, probably thanks to this remarkable young crew member we had in my part of the aircraft. I could hear the crazy frenzied stewardess somewhere at the back yelling at passengers to move on and get out of the aircraft using the emergency exits at the rear.  I undid my seat belt, stood up, quickly thought that I could and should carry my laptop case which had my cell phone and wallet containing my Pan card, credit cards, boarding pass, bills from my trip that I would need to submit to my office in it. Then listening to the screaming behind me and sensing the jostling that was happening, I decided to take only my phone and wallet to make for an easier and faster exit. As it happened I was wearing slightly high heels and a saree (dress code for the training I had just conducted in Kochi) and funnily enough (now that it is over) the first thought that occurred to me as I stepped out on the wing of the aircraft to go down the chute was, "will my sari ride up as I slide down?" I took one step onto the chute and before I knew it I was falling on my butt and my wallet was flying out of my hand (hope you never have to find this out for yourself but the evacuation chutes are extremely bouncy!). I could see some papers (not sure what they were in that instant) fluttering out, and some cards falling out of the wallet. The wallet itself landed on the wing of the aircraft. Knowing that I just had to get my wallet back, believe it or not I scrambled back onto the wing and retrieved it, cursing myself for not bringing my laptop case with me - if I had had it this would not have happened! Anyway, my phone and wallet clutched tightly in my hand once again, I slid down the chute at a tremendous speed with no control at all over my body (for obvious reasons the chutes allow for no friction with the body which will slow down the evacuation). I landed in a heap on the hard tarmac with one knee folded under me. Judging by the stinging sensation and the bruise I saw on my shin in the split second before I scrambled onto my feet and started running to the edges of the tarmac to put distance between the aircraft and myself, I realised my fears had come true - my saree had ridden up during that roller coaster ride down the chute! The tarmac was crawling with Anti Terrorist Squad, Intelligence Bureau, Dog Squad, Police, and Airport personnel and their vehicles......had anyone seen me being unceremoniously dumped on the ground by the treacherous evacuation chute, with my saree hitched up God knows how high?!!!!! Such a vain and frivolous thought in such a potentially dangerous and serious situation, but there it is, it happened.....ha ha ha!

As I half brisk-walked, half ran away from the aircraft I checked to see if all the important contents of my wallet were still there. Oh no! my Pan Card was missing and there was no sign of my boarding pass either. A quick backward glance showed me something lying below the wing, near the wheels of the aircraft. Should I dash back and see if it was one of the things I was missing? Stupid, I told myself, there might be an explosion any second now, just get away from the aircraft! Joining my fellow flyers who had by now evacuated the plane and were standing at the edge of the tarmac (some without any footwear but with their entire cabin baggage (smart guys!), others with nothing except their babies and toddlers - no handbags, no wallets, no phones, nothing at all), I waited for the airport coaches to arrive. What was I going to do......I had no Pan Card now and no boarding pass. Whether or not the plane exploded in the next minute was the least of my worries now that I was safe.......I could foresee the hassle of applying and waiting for a new Pan Card just when we were about to start packing to move house and relocate. More important and of immediate concern was the fact that technically since I didn't have my Boarding Pass or the only ID I had been carrying, I had no proof that I had really been on flight AI - 047, and that I was therefore entitled to a seat on a plane Air India would put us on to go home, whenever that would be!

With this on my mind I clambered onto an airport coach, which after what seemed to be hours, transported us to the airport terminal, where we found out that we had landed in Bangalore! We were herded and kept close together in a holding area so no one could wander off...... there was the added complication of having amongst us foreigners who had completed their departure immigration formalities in Kochi and whose passports now showed them as having exited the country! An important looking man with an ID card round his neck, who seemed to be listening patiently to individual concerns and complaints from the hapless passengers, and from whom various airport personnel seemed to be taking orders, came close to where I was standing. On an impulse, I went up to him and told him about my lost Pan Card, and that that was the only ID I had with me on this journey. Incredible though it seems to me now, considering the much much more important things anyone in a position of authority would have had to deal with in that situation, the man asked me where I thought it had fallen, assured me that he would call his men who were at that moment out on the tarmac sanitizing the plane to make sure it was safe. He would ask them to look for the card. I thanked him and went and found a place to sit, thinking that I had done what I could but that there was very little hope of finding the card. I could hardly believe my ears when an hour and a half later the man informed me that my Pan Card had been found exactly where I had said it had fallen. Thirty minutes later, I watched as the sanitizing staff carefully passed the card under the locked plate glass doors between the tarmac and terminal building. My saviour received it, and casually handed it to me. This man I later found out was in charge of Airport Security in Bangalore!

Ridiculously, after spending five or six hours being held in the airport terminal, (during which time we were allowed to go on board the sanitized aircraft to pick up the cabin baggage we had abandoned as we evacuated), we were transported to a hotel that was 45 minutes away, and then transported back to the airport to catch a flight after spending barely 90 minutes in a hotel room that each of us had to share with a complete stranger!

I finally got home exactly 12 hours later than I was supposed to, tired and annoyed that we had been put through this ordeal on the mere suspicion of an explosive on board, yet grateful for the steps that had been taken and of course relieved that nothing had been found, and that we were all safe. I also came home that day enlightened about many things, namely that age and experience do not add up to expertise or professionalism, that some people in positions of authority will readily do little things that are well within their power to do for little people, no matter how many other important things they are responsible for, that women can be amazingly stoic and strong and calm for their children, that no matter how often you fly you must NOT peruse the in-flight shopping magazine when the safety and evacuation procedures are being demonstrated ;), and above all that I can be super calm under pressure (hopefully because of my inner strength and not because I am in shock) and have very mundane thoughts even in life and death situations:)!!!!    





       








        

What's your "work the room" score?

I should be good at it, but sadly I really suck at this skill. It has nothing to do with being able to stand long hours at cocktail receptions (after four years in Germany I believe I have learnt this from the best - the Germans!), being able to hold a full dinner plate and wine glass and eat, drink and talk while standing (thanks to those most convenient plates with the crazy hook/hanger/ring that holds your glass on the rim of the plate), or being able to make small talk with utmost sincerity (if nothing else the almost 30 years I have spent living the diplomatic life have taught me that!)!

Okay okay okay I think I've probably completely lost you now so let me reveal the name of this skill that I don't have - it is called "working the room"! You are highly skilled in this area if you manage to hold a conversation with eighty to a hundred per cent of the people in a gathering of anything above ten people! Just kidding, but I am sure you know what I mean.......

Believe me, working the room successfully is not for the faint hearted .....and faint hearted I am! For this reason I feel my heart sink a little when I enter a party in which everyone is standing and talking to someone or other, and I begin to wonder if anyone's going to talk to me. Funnily though, while at first glance everyone seems to be busy enough to make you feel lonely and out of place, on closer inspection, nine out of ten people in that room seem to me to be invariably looking for a way to end whatever conversation they are engaged in, with kind phrases like "I'm going to let you go", "I just spotted someone I need to meet", "don't let me keep you" or whatever! It's almost palpable, the anxiety to mix and mingle, the need to move on and talk to a person other than the one one is currently talking to, the tendency to quickly mark the people one absolutely must meet before leaving the party, the half listening-half searching expression on the faces of the "working the room" experts! While this knowledge helps me to sometimes catch an "expert's" searching eye and steal someone's conversation partner, from here on I am a non-starter!

More often than not, I don't make any headway at all after this coup! I must be the person who tots up the lowest score in terms of "the number of people met" during the party. For fear of hurting or abandoning whoever it is I am talking with, most of the time I find myself losing the race I call the "Who's going to excuse him/herself and move on first - him or me Race?". Not that I am particularly boring, and I don't think people want to run away from me, but then neither do I have a great need to move on to someone else every few minutes, which makes me a sucker and a loser in this race! While I am steeling myself to try to be the first one to move on, my partner in conversation has usually already beaten me to it in the most natural, easy manner that reflects none of the struggle, guilt or mental preparation I go through even when I desperately want to extricate myself from a conversation!

So what do I do on arrival at a stand up reception? Just pray that I will get lucky and run into someone just like me who is happy to have an extended conversation about something, or who is worse than me at "working the room"! Who knows, this person might be the trigger I need to push me into perfecting this valuable skill! Hahahaha......   

Truly Nirbhaya

Nirbhaya has been on my mind since yesterday when the four accused in the December 16, 2012 gang rape in Delhi were declared guilty.

That in a system such as ours, where we have become used to law breakers getting away scot free, these four men have been pronounced guilty of murder, rape, and several other crimes is I believe, solely due to Nirbhaya's bravery, immense physical and mental strength. She had the courage to relive again and again in her mind the horrendous things that were done to her. She had the strongest will ...only this kept her alive to make sure she could give a lucid, detailed account of what happened on that bus in the late evening of December 16. Her physical strength and fighting spirit is proved by the very fact that she survived a whole fortnight with the most extreme injuries to her vital organs.

Today, September 13, 2013 brings satisfaction that by due process of law over 9 long months, the rapists have been handed a sentence they truly deserve. Today is the day the accused have been sentenced to death by hanging. The case was 'fast tracked' but not hurried in any way..... it is heartening to know that the judiciary did its job in being responsive to the needs of society but followed due procedure and found society's need to be justified.

Many thoughts are going through my mind, as I am sure are going through the minds of millions of others all over India, as I mull over the death sentence for the four adult rapists and the three year sentence awarded to the juvenile. Uppermost is this.....the rapists in this case have been awarded death because it was a "rarest of rare crime". So, is this going to deter other rapists who do not 'torture' their victim? Is the act of rape itself not 'torture' for the victim? Second, how can such rapists be deterred? Are we only going to sit up and take notice and action against gang rapists who 'torture' their victims? Third, what sentence will be awarded to rapists who just rape and torture but not kill or cause injury that causes the death of the victim? Will it be a life sentence? Will it be a life sentence of 14 years, which would be ridiculous for a young person? (And in this context how incredibly irresponsible of our juvenile judicial system is it to award 3 years to the juvenile rapist who was not only just a few months short of 18 years of age but who is also deemed to have served several months of this sentence while being held in custody? What is going to stop him raping women again if not gang raping, torturing, killing?) To return to the length of  a life sentence, if it cannot be changed to imprisonment till death, then can sentences for the various crimes for which the accused are convicted not all be added up and applied, as is done in some countries like the US? And if this cannot happen in our system then can the juvenile not serve his sentence and leave jail with an ankle bracelet for instance that will help the enforcement agencies to monitor his movements and whereabouts?

To end my ramblings..... a few simplistic, probably naive, even slightly stupid thoughts but I'm going to put them down anyway...... when Amnesty International protests against the sentence, (and as expected it is already making the usual negative noises against the death penalty and other human rights organisation will echo these noises), do they not consider the rights to life and safety of the victim? If we allow a child prodigy, who is for instance all of 13, 14 or 15 years of age, to enter university because intellectually he has the capability of an 18 year old, then can he/she not be considered an adult who can and should take responsibility for his adult crimes?      

At the risk of sounding blasphemous........!

A journalist friend of mine who just happens to be male, was annoyed and quite incredulous when some of the nation's most respected newspapers called the July 2012 mob molestation of a young woman in Gauhati a case of 'eve teasing', a term which diluted the seriousness of the incident and trivialized it, although this was probably not the intention. Or was it?????

Incidentally, on the one  occasion I  used this term in an international setting among friends from various foreign countries, there was complete incomprehension on their faces. It would seem then that 'eve teasing' is a term exclusively coined and used in India!

So is 'eve teasing' really something exclusive to our culture?  At the risk of sounding blasphemous, I see in pure, original and physically unthreatening (though no less objectionable) 'eve teasing' behaviours (such as whistling, making catcalls, singing a romantic song as a girl walks past, passing stupid or lecherous comments about a girl within her earshot, winking, etc.) a license that the perpetrators of such acts have given themselves, thinking themselves to be clones of Lord Krishna who often 'teased' the gopis! 

Inspired (to my mind) directly by the good Lord Krishna, Bollywood of the 60s, 70s and 80s carried this indigenous 'eve teasing' or 'chhed-chhaad' culture to the level of physicality by having the hero roughly manhandle the coy and unwilling heroine who by the end of the song almost invariably became willing and pliant. Unfortunately, the above Bollywood formula has become romanticized, amusing, acceptable, and is considered playful and harmless even though it sometimes borders on violence as in shoving and pushing and arm twisting (immortalised in song as baiyyan marodna)! It has given the stupid 'roadside romeo' the stupid idea that this is how even real women want to be wooed....and who knows, perhaps at one time they did, because it probably seemed appropriate for a good Indian woman to be falling in love 'unwillingly'! Given our addiction to Bollywood films, is it surprising then that this celluloid sanction sometimes acts itself out on the streets in the form of violence against women?

Today the manhandling Bollywood hero sometimes gets a dose of his own medicine from the less than coy, and often man-eating vamp cum heroine cum item number girl. At other times he is a true metrosexual and tries less rough, more cerebral or simply, openly sensual wooing tactics.

In these confusing times, what is the pea-brained romeo on the street to do? He does not have the wherewithal to be cerebral, the finesse or experience to be subtly sensual, or the looks, attitude or means to be metrosexual. So he uses crude physically sexual overtures, and because the sexily dressed, immensely desirable object of his unwanted attention is not only no longer secretly elated, but openly contemptuous of him and resists his advances, he uses violence, telling himself she needs to be taught a lesson or alternately convincing himself that she like her sisters of yesteryear wants it, but only as a fait accompli and if she can appear unwilling.

And that's what he gets completely wrong - that when a woman says 'no' (at least today if not in earlier times as well), she means NO, that any kind of unwanted attention is a crime, that 'eve teasing' and rape and molestation are all as bad, no matter how physically threatening or unthreatening each of them may be, no matter how she is dressed or how she behaves, and no matter what the cause or level of his arousal may be! On a parting note and again at the risk of sounding irreverent, in order to rid our dictionary of this 'eve teasing' euphemism, it may help to stop and think that maybe even Krishna's gopis actually really did not want to be eve teased or harassed or molested (call it what you will) at all, and that all we hear to the contrary was wishful thinking on the good Lord Krishna's part!

             

Remembering with smiles....

Remembering with smiles....

how you got mad at the Mills & Boons I read and exhorted me to read and watch 'real' love stories like  'Waterloo Bridge'
how I read your favourite book 'How green was my valley' and loved it too
how I trusted you more than myself to give my newborn babies their first manicures
how your knotty, almost workman's hands could be that gentle and tender and careful
how I loved to listen to your stories of wartime Britain and postwar Germany and your favourite quote 'history is written by the victor'
how you got mad when an admirer from college called up every evening and hung up the minute he heard your deep, deep voice
how you always thought such boys had something 'hanky panky' in their minds or they would not hang up
how I wanted to say "yes of course they do", but did not
how my girlfriends loved your deep, deep voice on the phone
how you invariably caught me running out of the house without an umbrella on a rainy Mumbai day and pushed that infernal umbrella into my hands
how you always said "OK, OK, you are looking beautiful, now move away from the mirror", when you caught me looking at myself in the mirror
how you tiptoed into my room and smeared my sleeping face with stinky Odomos because I did not do it myself and you were worried I would catch malaria
how you said I was old enough now and handed me my first glass of wine at 16
how you loved to make even tone deaf people sit down and listen to your Tchaikovsky symphonies
how you loved to dance the foxtrot, the waltz, the cha cha cha, the quickstep and all those 'oldie' dances
how I regret that I did not learn from you
how you and I shared a love of that king of fruits... the alphonso mango and could polish off half a dozen in one sitting
how you bought me kilograms and kilograms of the choicest seedless grapes at exam time because I needed to keep plopping them into my mouth as I studied
how you could be trusted to wake me up at 3 am on exam mornings with a sprinkling of water if I did not heed the first half dozen calls
how you loved a house full of people, music, jokes and laughter
how people you helped find a job almost worship you to this day
how you loved taking the family for post dinner drives to Marine Drive
how nervous you were when I had my Cesarean deliveries
how proud you were when at 16 I wore my first saree to a family wedding and your mother thought I looked like a  'princess'
how you wore your uniform with such pride and insisted on washing and ironing it yourself
how you did not trust washing machines because they ruined your shirt collars
how paranoid you were on Diwali nights when I went out to light firecrackers and you personally made sure I changed out of silks into safer cottons
how you taught me to always compose a picture before unthinkingly clicking the camera
how you loved to drive but drove so safely (and slowly) that we laughed and called it 'royal speed'
how you trusted only yourself with our safety on those long road trips (on 60s and 70s roads) from Bombay to Delhi or Bangalore
how proud you were of me when you and I were the only ones standing upright in a cyclone at sea that had veteran sailors retching and heaving
how you always took the best, most expressive pictures of my babies
how you insisted that people with 'shifty eyes' were not to be trusted
how you hated Bollywood movies with a passion and never forgot to ridicule them, especially when the heroine had several changes of clothes in the course of one song
how we all still benefit from the goodwill you left behind Baba .......
and how a million little things a million times a day still remind me of you ......          

Mother's Day Musings

Mother's Day Musings

 I sat within easy reach of my phone all day long that day,  only to be deeply  disappointed ....my two boys had forgotten to call me.....how could they....was it even possible to forget Mother's Day in the US, where all around you that is all you see for several weeks in the run up to the second Sunday in May.....Mother's Day sales, sales, sales and more sales .....well they had forgotten and that was it.....swallow it and move on I told myself ....

My husband and I went out to dinner with friends, the hurt of not being remembered by my sons even on Mother's Day still uppermost in my mind. At 11.30 pm I went online after getting back home, and almost instantly there was the 'ping' of an an imcoming skype  call  ....

"Hi mom, Happy Mother's Day from both of us",  my older son typed....
"Hmmmmm......thanks.......you almost forgot didn't you......." I said, secretly elated but still a little grudging and hurt...."Mother's Day is almost over in India you know."
"No mom, we didn't forget, we just woke up" , he typed.  It was Sunday afternoon in the US and they had woken up after noon as usual! That much was entirely believable and made me feel a little better.

A week later Vikram my younger one came home for the summer.  We got talking and I ribbed him about how he and his brother would have been in deep trouble had they not managed to squeeze in their Mother's Day wishes to me just before the day was out. To which Vikram surprised me by saying "Mom when was Mother's Day?" "Don't you remember it was last Sunday? Don't you remember you and your brother wishing me late at night just before midnight?" Turns out his older brother had included him in his wishes to me as he himself  lay asleep,  blissfully unaware of this very important day! In his own defence Vikram said, "Come on Mum, don't you think it's stupid to remember to wish you happiness on just this one day of the year?" "Hmmmm....interesting thought" I said quite touched and left it at that...

Equally touching to my mind was my other son's lie about his younger sibling joining him in sending me Mother's Day wishes. It was just about the most beautiful white lie in the world ......he understood just how much it meant to me to be wished by both my kids on this day...that understanding and the desire to avoid causing me hurt was worth a million Mother's Day wishes...  I swore to myself then that I would never again be stupid enough to peg my kids' love and thoughtfulness to the ridiculous ritual of wishing me Happy Mother's Day!

And to think that our kids never asked to be born....why impose on them and expect them to express how thankful they are that we gave birth to them by wishing us and showering us with presents on Mother's Day?

 Instead, if we women shower each other with Mother's Day greetings (which we do), that is exactly as it should be....it seems the perfect thing to do to celebrate the great privilege we have of bearing children and of  enjoying the joys of  motherhood!

Sadly, to completely convince me about the unnecessariness of this day, it so happened that the very next day  after Mother's Day this year, I paid a heartbreaking, gut wrenching condolence visit to a couple who had lost a 23 year old son in a road accident just days before Mother's Day.  And then recently I received the completely shattering news that a colleague had suddenly and unexpectedly lost a 41 year old son to a massive stroke.

Both mothers never got to meet their sons as they lay dying. Both mothers will never receive Mother's Day calls and visits and presents from their sons ever again. Would these mothers care if their sons miraculously came back to life but never ever remembered to wish them on Mother's Day? We all know the answer to that one, don't we?


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