Journey of changing motherhood, kal & aaj

As a child in the seventies, I recall my mother’s duties being clearly defined. The most important was ensuring we finished the two rotis on our plate. In my sister’s case, this was an arduous task as she had to keep poking her younger child’s cheek where lumps of masticated wheat were deposited like they were gathering compound interest. The others revolved around completing our homework and the mandatory braiding of hair. Sometimes not satisfied with two pigtails, these plaits were twisted back to the side of our heads and fastened with a ribbon, so we looked more like goats with flapping ears than little girls.

Aside from these daily rituals, we were left to our own devices. This meant we had ample time to chase chickens in a nearby dump or run down the lane to Gopal’s shop for sweets on credit. We even had a ‘setting’ with the juice wala on the beach. Along with selling sugarcane juice and ice-cold colas, he saved us all the bottle caps of Gold Spot. At that point, the most significant event in our lives was the announcement of Gold Spot’s famous contest, where bottle caps with Jungle Book characters could be exchanged for a prize.

Like the other mothers of that time, my mother was not particularly bothered by our dubious social activities as long as we didn’t argue and performed a decent namaste in front of guests. When I compare what motherhood meant when I was a child to what I have to undertake as a modern mother, it is terrifying.

My initiation into motherhood began in 2002 when my son was born. This was the time when my husband told a visitor that I was unavailable because I was ‘milking’ and immediately sealed my transformation from a hot chick to a cow. It was also a period when an entire generation of mothers would show newborns Baby Einstein videos to stimulate their brains. It didn’t occur to anyone that not only did Einstein’s mother not play any videos for her son, but as evident in her letters, she was primarily preoccupied with his appearance instead of his intellect. In her memoirs, Einstein’s wife states that just before the genius was about to receive the Nobel Prize, his mother rushed towards him with a comb and said, ‘There is nothing I or anyone with the exception perhaps of God can do about your great big darling deformed head. But there is something we can do about your hair.’

Hair, as we have already established, has always been a large part of mothering. Though the mothers of the seventies and eighties often had to moonlight as hairdressers, modern mothers, besides having hairdressing skills, are meant to be therapists, event planners, stylists, educators, motivational coaches, and nutritionists rolled into one. We must also preferably hold down jobs with one hand and our children with the other. We must breastfeed but not have droopy breasts. We must feed them the right combination of nutrients and avoid eating their leftovers to have the waistlines we once had before these creatures turned our wombs into their personal campervans. We must ensure they are entertained, mingle with the right peers, and praise their crooked drawings like we are courtiers bowing to the emperor with no clothes. All this should be accomplished by a method called ‘gentle parenting’, unlike our mothers who ordered us around like army colonels.
In pursuit of this parenting style, my bedtime routine with my younger one often stretches endlessly as I combat questions like why it matters that you brush your teeth every night, even if those teeth will fall off soon enough. To get her off the iPad, I need to deploy statistics about the surge of myopia in children. In the list of roles a mother needs to play today, I omitted mentioning the largest one, becoming a screen time monitor. Looking at all these children with their heads bent over flickering screens, I can’t help feeling a certain nostalgia for a time when our imaginations were our greatest tools. We strained bougainvillea flowers to create tinted water that we applied on cheeks and T-shirts. We turned rainwater-filled potholes into our own French Riviera, where we would set sail paper boats made of newspapers and mark sheets. Today, we are likely to stop our children from playing in muddy puddles and run behind them with sanitiser to attack germs.

While the modern mother does ensure her children are safer than previous generations, I wonder if we are wrapping them in so many layers of bubble wrap that they cannot experience the real world except as a hazy blur. Are we doing them a disservice by raising them in a homogenised, sanitised world where they play the same games online and have the same extracurricular activities? Is that why the current generation, with their similar mannerisms, clothes and interests, all seem like clones of each other?

In the playground of modern motherhood, the seesaw between security and liberty has a prominent place. Too much freedom, and you will be seen as uninvolved. Too little, and you are stifling them. This journey through the landscape of motherhood, kal and aaj, remains unchanged, along with the requisite blame and guilt.

Perhaps this Mother’s Day, instead of flowers or candy, I will reserve my present for the future. One day I would like to receive the gift I finally gave my mother. I erased her saintly pedestal of motherhood because pedestals are narrow by nature, and it only takes one twirl to fall. In my forties, I gave my mother the gift of acceptance. I let her know that I didn’t blame her for any inadvertent slip-ups. After having my children, I understood that our job as mothers is not to give our children perfect childhoods but to love them dearly and do our best within our inherent limitations.

If I am honest, I haven’t given her complete absolution yet. I am holding a bit back until she lets go of a peculiar habit. There has never been a significant event in my life, where my mother instead of being excited about my achievements, has not started fretting about my hair and with a worried frown, reached out to put stray strands in place. On this front, I can safely state that Einstein and I have something in common: Our mothers’ obsession with our hair.

There was more that I had to say about motherhood, but by the time I reached the penultimate paragraph, my little one began asking for her screen time password. After negotiating with her, I couldn’t quite remember the points for my grand finale.

Clearly, in some cases, motherhood is a journey where someone constantly pulls the emergency chain and halts your train of thought.