I went through the movie Koi Mil Gaya for the first time today, and although the movie didn’t seem very special to me, one scene, it seems, has been taken right out of my life. Perhaps now I can understand the quandary Mom would have been in, when she took the decision that changed my life. If not for her, I could have been one of those outcasts, a seven year old in the body of a full grown adult, another one subjected to the mockery of this pitiless world, another incapable and unwanted entity. I can’t imagine from where she mustered the courage to send me into an eight hour long operation, with only 10 percent chance of survival, facing bravely the wrath of the entire kin. I was eight months old then, and she must have been my age. Her life could have been a living hell had I not survived. And yet, she took everything in her stride, just to provide me with a life of respect and dignity.
Today, even as I think, this very thought is a gift of hers. The courage and patience she displays in even the most demanding of circumstances fills me with a sense of respect for the divine virtues of female form. In these testing times, when clouds of self doubt have left no stone unturned in trying to petrify me, it’s her faith in me that has kept me going. I know I will overcome these bulwarks, as I did back then. I know I have said things I shouldn’t have, I know there have been times when I hurt her. I have never told her, or anyone else, how much she means to me. Perhaps the strong and emotionally bereft creature that I pretend to be, I never will. And yet, I know whenever I am down in the doldrums, she will always be there to rescue me, like she did, 21 years ago. I guess that is what makes mothers divine.
