I always wanted
to hate my mother. She looked after my needs, gave me more than I needed but
was not there when I wanted her to understand me, my world. She found fault in
everything I did: the long hours spent in the mall, longs hours spent over the
phone, the people I hanged out with, the books I loved to read, in short nearly
everything. When brother did something really bad, the blame came on to me. When
he was not studying, I must have done something to distract him.
My heart cried
her own secret battle for her attention, her understanding. But it never
happened. I wanted to shout on top of my voice “Why me?” When it became too
much to bear, I shouted, I shouted angry bitter words and my heart cried
retribution. Later, I remember being termed as “vehemently rude”.
Life has made me
fall a thousand times, sometimes due to my stupidity, at times due to
circumstances. It never bothered me. Isn’t life all about falling and getting
up? Failures never swayed my unremitting confidence. “If one door closes than in
some other place another opens!” My motto is pretty much that. But my mother
was my opposite. When I was the optimist, she became my nemesis. She wanted to
protect me from failures but can she?....if that’s what life has in store for
me. I remember telling her just that more than a million times. Each time, she managed
to bypass my words and succinctly put forward her warnings.
The daily tiffs
left me utterly disgusted. I wanted a mother not a dictator. After all these
years, I can say with conviction that she has not changed a bit. There were
moments, strong moments when I wanted to hate her with every fibre of my being.
The hell with her domineering attitude!
But I never
brought myself to do that. I always found myself transported to one of those
times, the moments of impact, when she became the mother I wanted her to be “the
soft caring lioness”……..
Long long
summers back, on a late afternoon, I was having my light afternoon slumber,
when I felt my mother enter my room. She had just returned from office. She slowly
came towards me and lightly brushed her hand through my hair. Neither I was
awake nor I was sleeping, but like a fossil that moment is forever engraved in
my memory. I can’t really explain what I was going through then, but it felt as
if slow electricity was passing through my body. In that moment, I knew with
clarity what it feels like to be the Kohinoor diamond.
The moments of
impact….The moments of impact tells us what we really feel about a person. We can’t
change a person but what we can is to accept them as they are. If I sit down to
remember my mother’s harsh scathing accusations then it will take me forever to
forgive her. Every time the thought of hatred passes through my mind, I remember
that moment and everything else becomes blurred. In that one moment, I saw her
love for me and nothing else is bigger than that.
Life is not
about holding grudges, but it is about forgiving. Just because a person does not
do things the way we want them to be, we start hating them. In moments when you
start doubting a persons’ devotion or love for you, remember the moments of
impact, when that same person treated you as the precious Kohinoor diamond.
Your heart will
know the answers!
