Skip to main content

Nights of Scorpions

 

The Pieta

In one of his best-known poems, ‘Night of the Scorpion,’ poet Nissim Ezekiel describes the agony of a mother who was stung by a scorpion. Those were days when the rustic people would rely on traditional cures rather than take the victim to a hospital. So the “peasants [who] came like swarm of flies” “buzzed the name of God a hundred times” and uttered prayers and chants. They believed that the sins of her previous birth would burn away in her present pain and that the misfortunes of her next birth would be decreased. Her pain would make its momentous contribution to the balancing of the sum of all evil in this illusory world.

Some twenty hours pass before the pain loses its sting. When it does, the mother’s consolation is: “Thank God the scorpion picked on me / And spared my children.”

That is mother’s love.

Mother is an emotion, an emotional bond. Perhaps no other person on earth – perceived as a concept – has received so much attention from poets, artists and sculptors. Michelangelo’s Pieta housed in St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican is one of the most enduring and endearing tributes to maternity. The dead body of Jesus lies in Mary’s lap. That was the final sword that pierced Mary’s heart.

When Jesus was taken to the Jerusalem Temple for the presentation ritual, the holy man Simeon prophesied that the child was going to rewrite history as well as drive a sword through Mary’s heart. The sword must have pierced Mary’s heart many times like when Jesus asked, ‘Who is my mother?’.

Jesus had a messianic duty to fulfil and hence the sword – the distancing between him and his mother – was unavoidable. Family ties have little role to play in the life of a messiah. The messianic vision is cosmic. Messianic redemption cannot be limited to a family. Hence the mother will have to lose her son. That sword is inevitable.

The rather unpleasant truth is that every mother’s heart is always susceptible to swords. Every child begins life as a part of its mother. The part-whole relationship continues for a few years of infancy and early childhood. For the mother, the child always remains a part of her though the child will grow up and become a separate individual who has to find his or her place on the earth. Time will undoubtedly pass steadily and draw the mother and the child apart.

We live in a world today that draws the mother and the child apart too soon. One reason is that most mothers are working women today. They have to attend to their jobs during the daytime. For some mothers, it could be night-time. Children are deprived of the most affectionate touch they can get in the world. They are deprived of the emotional warmth that can come from nowhere else but a mother’s heart. A child that grows up without getting that touch and warmth is likely to be an unwholesome personality. No wonder, we have too many abandoned parents today living in old-age homes or living separated from their adult children.

Psychologist Erik Erikson argues that the mother lays the foundation of the personality. He calls it ‘basic trust’. Basic trust is the cornerstone of the psychologically healthy personality, according to him. He defines it as “an attitude toward oneself and the world derived from the experiences of the first year of life.” Trust, for him, implies both trusting others and oneself: trustfulness and trustworthiness.

This attitude is established first in the mother-child relationship. It is at first an unconscious process. Every hug from the mother, every kiss of hers, every touch of hers, adds to that trust and reinforces it. With each of those, the child begins to feel an increasing sense of security. It is that sense of security which eventually helps him/her deal with adult crisis situations.

Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) illustrates eloquently the importance of a healthy mother-child relationship. Schopenhauer’s mother was a popular novelist who considered herself a genius. She had a temperament and temper too, as Will Durant puts it. She was unhappy with her prosaic husband and when he died she took to free love. Schopenhauer could not bring himself to love his mother at any time. Consequently, he grew up to hate all women. Not only women, alas, he hated the entire mankind. He became one of the most pessimistic philosophers of all time. Speaking about his pessimism, Will Durant says, “a man who has not known a mother’s love – and worse, has known a mother’s hatred – has no cause to be infatuated with the world.”

The mother matters much. The mother shapes the personality. The mother determines whether the child will grow up to be a saint or a sinner, a philosopher or an entrepreneur, a success or a failure. William Makepeace Thackeray was not exaggerating when he said that “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”

Life doesn’t come with a manual, it comes with a mother, as a wit put it. We learn the primary lessons of life, the basic life skills, from mother. Mother is the shaper of destinies. Mother is indeed a god in that regard. Pain is part of her being as much as love is. There is no love without concomitant pain. Nights of scorpions are every mother’s prerogatives.

 

PS. This was originally written for an eBook that might have been published for all I know. The editor-compiler didn’t care to send me a copy of the book though I was invited to its online release. Now months have passed. So I take the liberty to post it here.

PPS. This blog is participating in The Blogchatter’s #MyFriendAlexa2021 campaign.

 

Comments

  1. beautiful writing about the power a mother holds..it made me reflect on myself and my relationship with my mother😁

    ReplyDelete
  2. Every word written here is true, the reason many young couples, who got this awareness refuse to bring children to this world. The society, unfortunately, tends to look down upon them for being sincere to themselves as well to the the children remaining unborn.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Indeed such decisions deserve great respect. It's no use bringing children into existence unless one can't ensure their healthy growth and development.

      Delete
  3. Nice post on Mother and Motherhood. She is the God on Earth.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well said Sir, " Mother is the shaper of destinies". The only unconditional love that exist in the world even before the arrival of the baby is mother's love!

    Archana
    archusblog

    ReplyDelete
  5. Excellent post on motherhood and the mother-child relationship + how it shapes us as adults.
    - shinjinim.com

    ReplyDelete
  6. There is a Shakespearean tragedy when it comes to mother and child. What you said about how a child is always a part of the mother and thus a mother must bear the pain of "losing" the child is both heroic [child no longer needs mother] and tragic. There is so much tied in that one relationship.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Mothers are such beautiful people and douch to shape the hearts and minds of their children. Beautifully written!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wow this is such a beautifully penned post. Loved reading this

    ReplyDelete
  9. nice post on mother and motherhood, so touching

    ReplyDelete
  10. While i do agree with most of what you have written i cannot agree to the lines that a working mother's children are deprived of warmth too soon. If anything else a working mom is made to feel too guilty that she tries to overdo what perhaps a stay at mom can not.
    Having said that i do agree mothers hold a very essential place in moulding the child. Also i haven't got your name in reading list i came on my own 😃

    Deepika Sharma

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Deepika for being with me on your own.

      I worked for 8 years in a girls school, my first job. I was young, all my students were girls and more importantly all my colleagues were female for a short period. My colleagues taught me about this problem of a working woman-mother. It is a problem. But we overlook it out of certain compulsions and necessities.

      We can discuss this further if you wish... 😊

      Delete
  11. Such a heart touching piece, such is the love of a mother.

    ReplyDelete
  12. This is such a beautiful post on motherhood and mothers.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Beautiful post on mother and motherhood. It's the mother's affection and guidance that makes or mars the personality of a child.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I totally agree with the fact that there is no other bond stronger than a mother-child's bond specially in the early years. " For the mother, the child always remains a part of her though the child will grow up and become a separate individual who has to find his or her place on the earth." this is also absolutely true.
    However , I do think that mother's have been conditioned by the society to act as martyrs and self-sacrificing for their children. so much so that even if they take some time off from mommy duties it brings with it guilt that debilates and eats away the soul.
    There needs to be a balance and a realization that mothers are also persons in their own right with their own dreams and desires

    ReplyDelete
  15. Wonderful post! Very honest and thought provoking.

    ReplyDelete
  16. You have compiled so many ancient meaningful stories which are relatable to life. It is the best post I have read today.

    ReplyDelete
  17. wow. coudnt agree more with your words. how true is a mothers love, sometimes we often ted to not acknowledge it.

    ReplyDelete
  18. I have read this elsewhere too. A touch can reinforce their trust in us parents. Our parents did it rarely as they were busy making ends meet. But, we can try and do it as much as possible.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Very well written sir. This is the irony of life whomever your are more attached with feels the most pain and that's true with mother child relationship. Despite of sharing the strongest bound... Going away makes it very painful.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser