I was five year old, I am told, when my mother died. I have a very vague memory of her. I am also told that I was a very tempestuous child - a far cry from what I am ever since my memory! - more so with my mother which she used to put up with broad smile and enormous love. I even once seems to have told that if she dies I would get different mother who would give me what I want; it haunts me ever although have said it when I was a naughty baby. I never got one like her since, how could one ever get. My temper must have been toned down irretrievably and forever ever since having missed a mother like her. Afterwords, I was with the care of my grandmother, a step mother of my father, and my mother's mother little away during my school vacation. The males in the family were too busy in reconstructing a life after the division of joint family just then, hardly had any time for my care. When I was put in a distant relative's family for four years for my "Middle School" (as it was then called) days I was again under the care of a woman, a widow, who was the head of the family. In all my student days, although I was fortunate to have exceptionally good and intimate friends in Giri (M.N.Hegde) and Sada (G.S.Sadashiva), all my other true friends, many in number, were all women with whom I mingled with no thought of gender in the mind. The place I worked/taught with my subject, the vast majority of my colleagues and students were women whose friendliness I can never forget.
When I got married and set up the house in 1968, I was the lone male living with two women in the family: my wife and her mother/my mother-in-law. Soon, another female arrived, my daughter, my only child. I lived with these three women in the family for the next 33 years and then loosing (in death) all the three one by one during 1995-2009, first my mother-in-law, then my daughter and finally my wife. Later, it was a woman again, a student of mine, who, along with her brothers and mother, related to my situation, of being alone, and offered help, and her care and concern remains to day even though now she is married and living in abroad.
My memories of love and affection are all women related: Mother, Grand Mother, Mother-In-Law, Wife, Daughter, Sister and Friends. I know, Good and Bad, Love and Hate, Brilliant and the Bore are not gender specific, may be equally divided among the sexes and yet I cannot get over the feeling, call it biased if you think so, that women are far more superior, far more intelligent, far more sensitive and far more caring. I grew amidst women and have become what I am because of them.
I am 73 now. It is agonising to see women put to such indignities even in recent times.
My salutations to all women on this Women's Day.
When I got married and set up the house in 1968, I was the lone male living with two women in the family: my wife and her mother/my mother-in-law. Soon, another female arrived, my daughter, my only child. I lived with these three women in the family for the next 33 years and then loosing (in death) all the three one by one during 1995-2009, first my mother-in-law, then my daughter and finally my wife. Later, it was a woman again, a student of mine, who, along with her brothers and mother, related to my situation, of being alone, and offered help, and her care and concern remains to day even though now she is married and living in abroad.
My memories of love and affection are all women related: Mother, Grand Mother, Mother-In-Law, Wife, Daughter, Sister and Friends. I know, Good and Bad, Love and Hate, Brilliant and the Bore are not gender specific, may be equally divided among the sexes and yet I cannot get over the feeling, call it biased if you think so, that women are far more superior, far more intelligent, far more sensitive and far more caring. I grew amidst women and have become what I am because of them.
I am 73 now. It is agonising to see women put to such indignities even in recent times.
My salutations to all women on this Women's Day.
1 comment:
It is indeed touching memory of yours ..... I know how a child feels after Mother's death.. one thing you can never replace in life..
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