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Paradox of Modern Living


Paradox of Modern Living
There is one incident which comes to my mind time and again, whenever my little child comes to me and asks quite imploringly to be picked up and told a story. I try to dissuade her but to no avail.Her nagging persistence turns my soft persuation into repressed anger and, finally, I scold her and turn her away, telling her to be busy with any damn thing and leave me free to concentrate on my work in hand.The child whimpers and sadly enough turns disruptive.
Oh what a heart rending scene. I realize later. I could have been a little more pursuasive, a little diplomatic and saved her the anguish.But alas the moment was lost and the harm done.
It is after such episodes that I reminisce my past days when life seemed miserable and the days sordid, when craving for motherhood pushed away any other wish that the heart could desire.To achieve the status of a mother was the be all and the end -all of any type of romantic alliance.Nothing else mattered.
The incident which comes to my mind belongs to that same period of time when whatever grain of joy i could garner was in the cuddly baby of my next door neighbour.He was a cute chubby baby-a mere toddler. I would see him always following his mother.The jingling sounds of its anklets made heavenly music to my ears.I would always take a vantage point in my window and be glued to it to see his anticsThe child would tag along its mother on all its fours while she performed her daily chores.His obsession with his mother was exemplary.He would overcome small hurdles deftly to reach her. .Slowly and rhythmically it would crawl very close to her and quite gleefully look up and lift its cute chubby hand to hold the hem of her sari.Then very carefully it stood staggeringly, swaying back and forth and clung to her legs. It would then look up imploringly at its mother's non-looking face and gurgle to be picked up. But she hardly noticed and went on doing her job.
The glistening warmth of the child's looks were wasted on her.Her gross person could hardly recognise the anxiously throbbing heart of the child who longed to be picked up and cuddled in her arms. But the one sure response this 'bundle of joy ' could elicit from her was her shrill cry of annoyance.She would simply step away a little so that the 'soft bundle' missed the ' prop 'and once again fell on its fours.
How sad and how cruel-I would ruminate.God's ways i found confounding.He blessed those who did not deserve and deprived those who craved and cared.
Days passed by and then a day came when I was also among the chosen ones. I declared to the wide world that I had triumphed. I strutted around, although a bit damp in my spirits(may be the mother- hood blues) but never- the-less transported inwardly to a world replete with 'manna' and 'myrrh'.But the one drastic change which my heart underwent was quite disconcerting for me in my private moments.No more did I find the next door neighbour's child the wonder of the world. He was no more the cynosure of my eyes.Neither was he the incarnation of angelic accomplishments. Female nature surfaced and all the magnanimity of my heart left me like the last whiff of the withering rose.The child was a mere child with all his share of infant charms and the accompanying irritants. His shrieks were no more sweeter than the notes of Rafi or Latha.My own bundle of joy became the focal point of my entire existence but at the same time some unforeseen and never to leave anxiety gripped my heart. I suddenly felt withdrawn.My child, I could feel, was also going through the trauma of entering into this holds -no-bar,world.It would peek a little and then shut its eyes and resign to its fate which was to be one of those who held the hem of their mothers to hold them back but who spurned them in their mad rush to join the most happening in the society.

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