A lady held aloft a piece of thick yellow paper, and asked a gathering of mothers whether they recognised it. The confused women wondered what kind of a question was that. But as the lady turned it around in her hand, a postal stamp and a few lines became visible. Lo and behold, it was the good old postcard, long forgotten and virtually confined to history. In the course of the hour-long Mother’s Day gathering, one among many organised across the tricity, the post card was to become a messenger of motherhood.
In a thoughtful gesture, the organisers asked each one of the 50-odd invited ladies in the gathering to pour their hearts out for their children on a post card each provided to them, in the form of written text, or whichever form they could best express their love, and write the children’s address for the organisers to later post them to the respective children.
Photos By : Life In Chandigarh
The idea behind the exercise, the lady explained, was not only to spring a surprise for the children, but also impress upon them the need to express themselves in writing. “Children, these days are not writing enough, no wonder most of them do not have a good hand and are not able to memorise what they read. They will not only get a wonderful feeling on receiving the post cards, but will be encouraged to reciprocate in writing, and maybe get into the habit of expressing themselves in writing,” she added.
It was a perfect start to an evening full of an outpouring of motherhood straight from the heart. Chief Guest for the occasion, Princy Singla, Joint Commissioner of Income Tax, surprised the audience with a frank sharing of her experiences of motherhood. She had a very loving reciprocal relationship with her mother, she said, adding that her respect for mothers increased manifold after she had her first baby, three months premature, and remained confined with it in a single room on medical advice for several months till its weight increased from just 770 grams on birth to 2.5 kg.
“I became an even better daughter and daughter-in-law in the years that followed. The experience of motherhood is very painful, but at the same time divine. There is nothing above a mother in this world, neither money nor ambition or career,” Ms. Singla emphasised.
Stressing the need for having a relationship based on complete trust between a mother and her children, she said mothers need to learn to give their children space so that they become responsible and self dependant at an early age. “We as mothers need to become role models for our children since they pick up habits in their formative years from us,” she asserted.
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Shabnam Sahi, a single mom, narrated her challenging journey from five years ago when she lost her husband to a heart attack and the world appeared to have collapsed around her. A housewife, till then, she said she picked up courage, and frankly explaining the position to her two children (her daughter was studying law and her son was in 6th standard), she went about rebuilding her life as a successful working woman while always feeling her husband’s reassuring presence besides her.
She said she had immense faith in the power of meditation, ‘bhakti’ and ‘pooja-paath’ and would like all mothers to inculcate these age old values among their children.
Sonia, nee Vandana, was quite vocal when she said she actually considered the mother as the man of the house, going about multi tasking all day long. “For me the status of a mother is even above God,” she asserted.
The Guest of Honour, Santosh Sharma, chairperson, Chandigarh Social Welfare Board, recounted her experiences of extreme resilience shown by single women during her
two decades-long social work in the slums. Some of them survived on just ‘roti’ and ‘pani’. She related one particular case of a woman, who bore seven girls to an abusive drunkard husband. The husband later died and she worked out of her skin to bring up the girls and got them married.
The event, aimed at supporting 10 odd identified single moms through the Social Welfare Board, was hosted by Maya Hotel Group in association with GBP Group under their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative. Ms. Jasleen Kaur represented Maya Hotel Group and Ms. Anupama Gupta GBP Group at the charity event.
