The relationship between a mother and a child is unique in many ways and also universal in some. Some mothers are friends with their children while some have trouble understanding them. Growing up pangs, tiffs, arguments, spats and quarrels over everything and anything are part of almost any relationship but more so with a mother and a child. There are always things to criticize and opinions to disagree on. They are after all a generation apart. But one thing I learnt early on in life was that no matter how much we disagreed with our mother, we never liked anyone else to point a finger at her. There is this fierce sense of protectiveness that rages from deep within, something we didn't even know we had because we had forever been complaining about her. But you watch a stranger say the same thing accusingly and you are ready to rip his head off. One was protective (almost to a fault) when it came to one's family, especially your mother. No matter how much you fought with her just minutes before. I guess that's what being a family is all about.
And I always thought that the same sentiment extends for your motherland. You are in some ways connected to her too with this invisible, but ever present umbilical cord, that constantly tethers you in this constantly changing world. Someone once told me that after living outside his country for more than thirty years, he realized that he had stopped defending his motherland of late. And that was when he said he decided to apply for an altered citizenship. For after all, a passport is only a label of convenience when your other ties have withered. For some reason, although accompanied by other flippant utterances, this statement latched onto me. It was true. So true, that most people dont realize it. But it also raised a conundrum in my mind. Of family members who spoke ill of the family.
I have always instinctively hated it when someone spoke disparagingly of my country. Not because they were always wrong because sometimes they pointed out things which I have ranted ceaselessly about but because they were strangers. And as outsiders, they had no right to criticize my home and my family. After all, you have to know the whole story before you can criticize it and how will the outsiders know the whole story, without having lived it. The complex social and cultural factors, the religious sentiments, the environmental factors, the bondages of history and footfalls of future. No one from the outside can know it all and make sense of it all. More so when I struggle with understanding her and her manifold forms despite having lived most of my life with her. But I would still control my impulses and try and be rational about the whole thing. I would try and explain the complexity of the situation and the multitude of factors weighing in, even as I defended her helplessly. There was nothing else I could do because the urge to defend is more primal and instinctive than one would like. But I don't do this in a passionate and blinded sort of a way, but more as a daughter who defends her mother with strangers around only to tell her the same things in the privacy of her home. And this is somehow what I thought every non-resident fellow national would do. It seemed like a natural and instinctive urge to me, almost unquestionable.
But then I end up meeting these people who for some reason have no good words to say about their homeland or its people. They criticize everything from the traffic to the education, from the dust to the weather with no sense of remorse or compunction. How are they so distant from their mother ? And how do they manage to stay so much in awe of their adopted country or a mother-in -law, so to speak ? After all, you are who you are because of your mother, who gave you your sense of right and wrong; who gave your view of the world. And while your mother-in-law likes you and treats you well, she really only likes you for what you can be; unlike the mother who loves you what you are ! How do people get so carried away in their awe for a new country that they fail to see the blood ties with their own. If distance is supposed to make the heart grow fonder, how can these few not feel love of their motherland so far from home. How can they not see that they were a part of the problem back home and that they can be the solution in the future too ? How can they not see that, everything they are today is because of that one unchanging presence. What they like and what they dont like, what they say and what they dont say are all driven by that one constant presence in their life. They may not acknowledge it but they can't deny it. How can they not see the many wonderful things even as they crib about the problems that abound ? How can they not think of the warmth of the people even as they crib about their tardiness ? How can they forget her rise from the ashes, almost like a phoenix even as they compare her to their new found "home-country" ? How does one snap that umbilical cord and still feel connected ?
Every time I meet such people, I wonder - is this what they truly, deeply feel or is this just a poor facade to try and fit in with the newer people... ? Can anyone truly hate their mother ?
And I always thought that the same sentiment extends for your motherland. You are in some ways connected to her too with this invisible, but ever present umbilical cord, that constantly tethers you in this constantly changing world. Someone once told me that after living outside his country for more than thirty years, he realized that he had stopped defending his motherland of late. And that was when he said he decided to apply for an altered citizenship. For after all, a passport is only a label of convenience when your other ties have withered. For some reason, although accompanied by other flippant utterances, this statement latched onto me. It was true. So true, that most people dont realize it. But it also raised a conundrum in my mind. Of family members who spoke ill of the family.
I have always instinctively hated it when someone spoke disparagingly of my country. Not because they were always wrong because sometimes they pointed out things which I have ranted ceaselessly about but because they were strangers. And as outsiders, they had no right to criticize my home and my family. After all, you have to know the whole story before you can criticize it and how will the outsiders know the whole story, without having lived it. The complex social and cultural factors, the religious sentiments, the environmental factors, the bondages of history and footfalls of future. No one from the outside can know it all and make sense of it all. More so when I struggle with understanding her and her manifold forms despite having lived most of my life with her. But I would still control my impulses and try and be rational about the whole thing. I would try and explain the complexity of the situation and the multitude of factors weighing in, even as I defended her helplessly. There was nothing else I could do because the urge to defend is more primal and instinctive than one would like. But I don't do this in a passionate and blinded sort of a way, but more as a daughter who defends her mother with strangers around only to tell her the same things in the privacy of her home. And this is somehow what I thought every non-resident fellow national would do. It seemed like a natural and instinctive urge to me, almost unquestionable.
But then I end up meeting these people who for some reason have no good words to say about their homeland or its people. They criticize everything from the traffic to the education, from the dust to the weather with no sense of remorse or compunction. How are they so distant from their mother ? And how do they manage to stay so much in awe of their adopted country or a mother-in -law, so to speak ? After all, you are who you are because of your mother, who gave you your sense of right and wrong; who gave your view of the world. And while your mother-in-law likes you and treats you well, she really only likes you for what you can be; unlike the mother who loves you what you are ! How do people get so carried away in their awe for a new country that they fail to see the blood ties with their own. If distance is supposed to make the heart grow fonder, how can these few not feel love of their motherland so far from home. How can they not see that they were a part of the problem back home and that they can be the solution in the future too ? How can they not see that, everything they are today is because of that one unchanging presence. What they like and what they dont like, what they say and what they dont say are all driven by that one constant presence in their life. They may not acknowledge it but they can't deny it. How can they not see the many wonderful things even as they crib about the problems that abound ? How can they not think of the warmth of the people even as they crib about their tardiness ? How can they forget her rise from the ashes, almost like a phoenix even as they compare her to their new found "home-country" ? How does one snap that umbilical cord and still feel connected ?
Every time I meet such people, I wonder - is this what they truly, deeply feel or is this just a poor facade to try and fit in with the newer people... ? Can anyone truly hate their mother ?
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