The Biggest Lie Told to All Mothers!

I am taking a break at my parents’ place these days and this comes after a long spell of incessant action marked by a book launch, revamping my academy, starting two new projects and working towards the accomplishment of a personal aspiration of years.

There! I think I have established my case well of needing and deserving a break. And there could not have been a more opportune time to go for one, which I am seriously questioning now, than the summer vacation of my two children.

Well, let me tell you this: it is the BIGGEST LIE being sold to every mother across the globe that she can go on a BREAK accompanied by her children! And innocent, blinded by love, gullible mothers readily pop this candy of a lie into their mouths and minds, all the while believing that they will actually get a break from the fist-clenching, hair-pulling and teeth-gritting job of motherhood.

The reality of this farce was rubbed into my being in a rather bizarre manner last night.

After having given up on spending quality time with my children at night when no go-to-bed curfews were imposed, I decided to sleep alone in peace. Everything was perfect as I retired to my solitary room to finish the novel that had reached its gripping climax. Let me inform you, I was able to do so with much relish and undisturbed engagement.

I decided to savour some old melodies on my play-list and allow them to gently serenade me to halcyon sleep. I was able to achieve this as well. The catastrophe struck after this.

As I was drifting into deep sleep, I felt through my closed eye-lids, a beam of blue light move around in my room. ‘I am seeing the Divine! Such peace…’, I thought. I settled further into my comforter and let out a deep sigh of relaxation. However, now the blue light was fixed at a spot and that was my face. I opened my eyes to find my nine-year old son standing tentatively in front of my bed.

“What is it?”, I snapped.

“There’s something ominous brown and green in colour with huge prickly legs flying around in our room!” Fear writ large on his charming face and popping out of his huge naughty eyes.

‘There goes a night of rest! Now which demons will I have to slay before I can rest my head peacefully on this welcoming pillow?’, I thought. I reluctantly climbed out of my bed and followed my son who was carrying his sister’s mobile to serve as a torch in the dimly-lit 20-step long passage from their room to mine. Let me mention here that he crossed his grandparents’ room on the way to mine.

My daughter 13 years of age, tried to salvage the situation as soon as I entered the room. “I told him, it is just a small insect. We could sleep just fine.” She said this to me while standing on the bed and her eyes following the exuberant cricket’s hops around the room.

Exasperated with the whole hullabaloo at the midnight-hour, I took a plastic tumbler from the kitchen, trapped the brown-green fiend and dragged it out of my children’s room. The whole drama ended without any casualties and desired and undesired violence.

“I can’t sleep here now! I’ll sleep with you mamma.” My son was marching out of the room ahead of me, with his pillow and comforter, sans the torch, as he said this.

I resigned to my destiny and went to bed with him. I was happy just to be asleep.

P.S.- Despite the travails and exasperating tests of motherhood, every mother basks in the UNCONDITIONAL LOVE of her children. And such episodes become fodder for the following day’s animated conversation, blog-posts and vibrant repository of bitter-sweet memories. Like my mother remarked to my sulking today, “Have you forgotten your own childhood, when a broom was always kept by my bed-side instead of my favourite book?”