The Heart of a Mother

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 13 May 2023 "Ma Ka Dil Mamta Aur Jazbaat Ka Woh Dariya Hai Jo Kabhi Nahin Sookhta” (The heart of a mother is a river of love and emotions that never gets dried up) “When you're a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child." Sophia Loren Just a few days ago, I read a heart-warming news article in a Bengali newspaper published from Dhaka that a doctor Golam Sadiq from Jessore (Bangladesh) rescued a new-born baby born of an unwed mother. This made me think about what makes a mother abandon her child: Poverty, social stigma or something else? A mother, an epitome of love and compassion, has had to part with a part of her existence and snap the umbilical bond. This is sad, truly sad. Can a woman ever overcome the grief and guilt after abandoning her child? Does she ever think about what will befall the child if he/ she survives? I don't think any mother at any point of human civilization has ever thought that her abandoned child would and should be devoured by wild animals. May he / she survive, thinks every unwed mother because a woman, more so a mother, can never think that her infant should meet with such a violent end. Kabir, the great poet-reformist, was born out of wedlock. His mother was a Hindu widow. He was brought up by a Muslim weaver, whose name was Neeru. I don't know how authentic it is but I read somewhere that Neeru knew Kabir's biological mother. The latter beseeched him never to spill the beans. "Just allow me to look at my child from a distance," she implored. The time and society at the time of Kabir were different. An unwed mother more than six hundred years ago was an anathema to society. She used to be burnt alive or stoned. And this was a prevalent practice all over the world. Renaissance polymath Nicolaus Copernicus' mother was impaled and burnt at stake for giving illegitimate birth to him. The child survived to become one of the greatest revolutionary as well as rationalist minds of Europe. The legendary West Indian batsman the late Sir Everton Weeks, one of the famed 3 Ws, was an illegitimate child, who had to bear the brunt of his childhood friends' taunts and jeers. We may have come a long way, yet we're still not liberal enough to accept this phenomenon as something pretty normal and commonplace. And why do women always have to suffer and bear the insults? Seldom anything happens to a man. Man considers it his divine duty to impregnate as many women as he can and hardly admits to having sired an illegitimate child. Even a man like the late Nelson Mandela willy-nilly admitted to be a father of an illegitimate daughter. She died a few years ago without ever having heard this from her biological father, who was called the 'father' of modern South Africa! Yet another great, Pele, the soccer legend, did the same and emulated Mandela on this count! Man is utterly emotionless and often matter-of-fact. That's why I always wonder how a mother copes with the trauma of disowning her baby despite carrying him/ her for nine months in her womb? Don't the pangs of compunction haunt her till she breathes her last? In Mahabharata’s Aranya Parva, Kunti tells Yudhishthir that she cried every day for leaving Karna in the lurch to be rescued by a charioteer. So, coming back to the point, what was going on in the mind of that helpless mother in Jessore while leaving her child and parting forever? Didn't she leave the place with a heavy and guilt-ridden heart? Didn't she weep inconsolably? I hope she got to know that her abandoned baby was in safe hands. ----- A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/heart-mother/d/129767 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism