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Kavita Chhibber has been a journalist and astrologer for many years. To know more about Kavita and her work, please visit www.KavitaChhibber.com.  
Celebrating Motherhood NRIS! Do you know?
“I have seen some of the coldest calculating women soften and change as they become mothers.”

May is the month when we honor mothers, and since the past couple of months, I have been interviewing celebrities and their equally well known children, for an article where they talk about their mothers and offer their perspective on what those moms have meant to them. That article appears in the May issue of the nationally syndicated, monthly magazine Little India. I decided to pick two generations from the same family-famous fathers and their well-known children, from different walks of life. The fathers were spiritual guru Dr Deepak Chopra, sarod maestro Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, and former tennis ace Anand Amritraj. I knew I had a gem on my hands, when the publisher Achal Mehra, who believes in what he calls ‘objective’, and I teasingly call ‘sterile” reporting, said, on reading it-“that is a very touching piece”. I guess even Mr. Objective is not immune to the charms of mothers!

I have been fortunate to have very strong women and amazing mothers in my family, but I think a woman becomes a far superior, more sacred, more honorable version of her self once she becomes a mother. A lot of what we may preach but not practice changes when we have to set examples for our children.

Mallika Chopra, Dr Deepak Chopra’s daughter was kind enough to send me a beautiful book she wrote, which was recently released. It is called 100 Promises to My Baby. In it I read that Mallika used to love eating chocolate cookies, she would often ask her husband as she was about to leave to run some errands, if she was looking too fat in the outfit she was wearing Then she saw her daughter Tara begin to demand junk food, and heard her tell her dad, at 2 not to put tights on her as they made her look fat! It made Mallika take a long hard look at her self, and not only change her eating habits, but also learn to be comfortable in her own skin and not obsess about her weight. This is just a small example of how being a mother is a learning process to be a better version of your self in more ways than one.

I have seen some of the coldest calculating women soften and change as they become mothers. I have seen others develop amazing patience, learn to multitask in a way that would leave any mere mortal exhausted, and learn that there is true joy in giving. Its also cute to see first time moms exaggerate their little wonder child’s achievements to the skies and also watch other moms swallow it totally and then go on spin their own tall tales!

Perhaps the most fiercely protective streak manifests itself when a mother sees her child being threatened. I have seen some very mousy, seemingly mild women become tigresses, then. Many women stay in abusive marriages just to protect their children and give them a semblance of a home.

Mothers come in all shapes and sizes and without a return receipt, but any one I have spoken to from any walk of life to describe their mom, most children say they have never doubted the unconditional way their moms have loved them. Most of them have also acknowledged that when they mess up or the going gets tough, its mom they run to, with their tails between their legs. I often find a bad rap given to step mothers, thanks to the Cinderella and Snow White kind of fairy tales. I have heard and seen enough to know some amazing mothers who have made great sacrifices and loved their stepchildren even more than their own. My paternal grandmother was one such woman. Even her own sons didn’t know for a long time that their eldest brother was not born from their mother’s womb. I think the deepest respect I feel is for those women who adopt unwanted children. While loving a child of your own comes naturally, it takes a truly generous and compassionate spirit to love an unwanted child, and give him or her a great start in life. I have however heard this enough times that once you hold a baby in your arms, its as if it was never anyone else’s but your own. It is also a frequent coincidence that most adopted children I know somehow end up resembling their adoptive parents. It only makes me believe that God has more than one amazing way to reach out to women whose loving heart wants a child.

I remember reading a fable about a young man who lived with his mother in a forest. He fell in love with a girl and said he would give her anything she wanted if she would marry him. The girl knew he lived with his mother and told him if he cut his mother’s heart out with a knife and brought it to her, she would marry him. The man was so besotted with the girl, that in spite of feeling sad at the prospect, he went ahead and did what the girl asked. Running across the forest to meet the girl, the man stumbled and fell. As he was getting up, his mother’s heart cried out, ‘ My son did you hurt yourself?” This fable says it better than I could about the depth of a mother’s love. Happy Mothers’ Day to all those special women who have embraced the toughest and yet the most enriching and fascinating job in the world- motherhood.

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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in these columns are solely those of the writers and do not necessarily represent those of the editor/publisher.

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