For Mother

I love
you.

What does this mean?
It means I dwell in your goodness. Love also harbors dislike. It’s impossible for a person to be all good. Love involves preferring the good aspects. Don’t we often wonder, why does such a beautiful girl go around with such an ugly guy? Yes, yes, everyone wonders. Every boyfriend of a beautiful woman is ugly! Every other man’s wife is gorgeous! Look into it, and you’ll find that boy has something the girl was secretly searching for. Alas! Though it also happens that seven years of fondness meets its tragic end in just three months—after marriage. Proximity dissolves the enchantment of distance. Setting that aside, the equation of love is generally undefined. Generally, boys worship beauty, girls value character. When a boy loves a girl, he only loves her good qualities. But when a girl loves a boy, she loves everything about him—good and bad together. This is where a girl’s love differs from a boy’s love.

Yes, back to where I was. Take this small household, like two little lovebirds. If love truly exists, then it’s better to forget or keep forgetting the minor disappointments. Like, what if the bread isn’t perfectly round! What harm comes of it? Round bread or lumpy bread—either will fill your stomach. Why must you say that so-and-so’s wife makes excellent bread? Do you know your wife has qualities that make that very woman intensely jealous? If you don’t praise your own wife’s good qualities, someone else will, and if that catches your wife’s attention, can you imagine what might happen? This is how everything falls apart. Women find great happiness even in tiny pleasures. Let me give you some advice, shall I? This advice will cost only 25-30 rupees. Today, on your way home from office, bring five marigolds and see what happens? It’s raining! Every creation of nature holds some magic. Be it sunshine or rain! You just need to know how to find the magic.

From the moment you leave the office, how much your wife has to manage! Between tasks, she watches a bit of those soap operas, flips through a cookbook—why do you only focus on this? Should a woman work constantly? Not everyone loves to read books either. So? What would you have the poor thing do? She can’t have phone romance with you—you’re busy at the office. Would it be good if she had romance with someone else? Do you work every moment you’re at the office? Literally every moment? If you do, then you’re an ox. Just because you’re an ox doesn’t mean someone else has to be one too.

Since childhood I’ve watched my mother. Honestly, if women had to be paid for the amount of work they do inside and outside the home, your wife’s salary would be at least double yours. Before leaving the office you get your breakfast, and returning home you get your coffee cup just right—no wonder it doesn’t bother you! Imagine coming home from office one day to find the house dusty, nothing swept or cleaned, bed sheets rumpled, no cooking done, having to make your own snacks, your darling little doll-like wife’s silky hair uncombed, wandering around the house in dirty clothes. How would that feel? Isn’t this discomfort and annoyance worth many times more than your salary? Is it easy to keep all this in order? A home survives on mutual respect and love. Let me tell my own family’s story. I never heard my father call my mother’s cooking bad. Father would say, “Because your mother manages the house all day, I can work outside.” Father called my mother (and still calls her) the Home Minister. Mother was often ill. When there was only lentils and mashed potatoes at the dining table, I never learned from childhood to ask, “Isn’t there anything else?” Rather, father would repeatedly acknowledge that despite her weak health, mother spent busy days with us two brothers. He would praise all of mother’s work. Mother would get as excited as a little child and, forgetting all her troubles, would sit with father and tell him everything that happened during the day. Father says, “Women are very childlike. If you hurt their feelings, it comes back manifold.” My mother taught children at a kindergarten school. She did this purely for pleasure. Running around with us, managing all the housework, maintaining social relations—mother had to do all this too. I think if you give your wife the respect she deserves, even if you don’t benefit, your children will. The family member who doesn’t earn money also feels as tired as you do. There’s no relation between earning money or not and feeling exhausted or not. If life’s small joys can be enjoyed with love, then not only does life’s arithmetic work out, but you get bonuses too. I can say this with certainty. Food tastes good not for flavor, but for love. Perhaps that’s why every mother’s cooking is the most delicious in the world. Those who’ve been away from home for long know how easily they’d say goodbye to all the world’s riches just to eat mother’s lentil soup and fried eggplant!

So, back to where I was! I was on love. I mean, dwelling in goodness. Nothing in life—the people we live with, the things we carry on with—is perfect. Yet we can live beautifully with all these imperfections. Life is short! How many more days will we live anyway! Where’s the time to go to sleep with regrets? If your wife works, calculate and see—she has to work at least three times more than you. The greatest work your wife does is raising your children into human beings. Creating good children is a person’s greatest achievement in life. Your wife does this sacred work. Have you ever checked whether your little boy is doing well with his studies at school? What happens if you eat out occasionally when there’s no good cooking at home? If you tidy up some household tasks, your wife can certainly cook you Thai soup. In my experience, I’ve seen how tense my female colleagues are about their children! Raising children alongside a job is an incredibly demanding task. Most of a child’s early worldview is shaped by the mother’s philosophy of life. The life wisdom needed to walk the world’s path is founded in childhood, with the mother. Mothers are the architects of our thoughts. I’ve seen that when I’m unwell, somehow my mother senses it before my father does. Whether I remember to call or not, mother always calls and asks, “Son, did you eat lunch?” I’ve often seen that when I say “yes” without eating, mother somehow figures it out. When creating, the Creator didn’t send men to earth with such intuition. Boys are born only twice: at birth and when becoming fathers. Girls are born three times: at birth, after marriage, and when becoming mothers. Girls must experience very clearly the intense responsibility and pain of birth. Every girl is born with infinite capacity to build a home. Take this very longing to return home! Would the yearning to come home exist so strongly if mother weren’t there? This one woman is sometimes a doe-eyed beloved, sometimes a skilled worker, sometimes an expert cook, sometimes a gentle homemaker, sometimes God’s representative as mother. What difficult work this is!

From yesterday until today I’ve received countless requests to write something about mothers for Mother’s Day. I cannot ignore my friends’ wishes. The urgency that someone waits for my writing is intense. I was busy yesterday, so I’m writing today.

I offer humble respect to all mothers in the world. May all mothers be very well.

On Mother’s Day I have only one wish—O God! Give some of my lifespan to my mother.

(Written the day after some Mother’s Day)