Malinda Words: Yet another mother’s day

Days. Dedicated days. Scam written all over them. One out of 365 days or 366 in a leap year designated to celebrate one category of people or one phenomenon. Just expresses something like this: alright, this day is for you (or ‘this’) but we go back to oppress the moment the clock strikes midnight. On the other hand, such days can be used to make people aware of things they seldom notice, be it oppression or destruction. Maybe lessons are taught and learnt. Maybe those who picked up something change the way they go about their lives. Not necessarily a bad thing.

The 8th of May is for women and womanhood. Came and went. I too received some of the innumerable requests posted on this day: think about women who are part of your lives, think about women who changed your life, think about women who suffer, brave and courageous women, indomitable women, angelic women who grace your world with tenderness. And I did.

But women’s days and mother’s days came to me a few days ago in a different context. That they came to mind is obviously an outcome of the hoo-haa over such days over many, many years, but that’s ok. Women and in particular mothers came to mind when I picked up a copy of Maxim Gorky’s ‘Mother’ from a book sale at the Communist Party headquarters. The Sinhala version, ‘Amma.’

‘Mother,’ it could be argued, gave more impetus to the Russian Revolution than the Communist Manifesto. In my case, it helped formulate certain notions about injustice and revolution, the kinds of challenges there will be, the prices that have to be paid and the enormity and yet possibility of revolutionary social transformation. Indeed, I believe in Sri Lanka, among university students with a particular political bent, ‘Amma’ was compulsory reading along with Ostrovsky’s ‘Peralu Nevum Pasa (Virgin Soil Upturned)’ and Bruno Apitz’s ‘Vurkayan Athara Nagnava (Naked among wolves),’ among other such 'inspirational' novels. I doubt if they engaged in as close a reading of Marx, Engles and Lenin. That’s another story.

So yes, I thought of both women and mothers, as I reflected on the character Pelagueya Nilovna Vlasova. And I thought of all the mothers in my life. Mother. Grandmothers. Sister. Sisters-in-law. Wife. Daughters. Aunts. Cousins. Nieces. They all have names and their names are known. Then there are the mothers of friends whose names are hardly known but for whom I was ‘putha,’ treated just as their sons were treated. Strong, independent women who more than their husbands or brothers faced the tests that life threw at them with fortitude and wisdom, efforts taken for granted for the most part.

Mothers in particular. And four of them I have to name: Indrani Seneviratne, my mother, her mother Kisa Herat who was so much my first mother that I am told I called her ‘Amma’ when I was an infant, Samadanie, my wife, mother of my daughters and who in her own way has taken care of me as a mother would her child, and my sister Ruvani, the most tenaciously protective and yet creator of multiple avenues to freedom for her children that I’ve known. All strong, independent, caring and generous women who have, in their own ways, challenged and triumphed over the patriarchies they found themselves in. You could replace these names with those you know and I am sure the descriptions will still be apt.

And there are, I am sure, innumerable women who do not share the name of the character in Maxim Gorky’s ‘Mother’ but are no different from Pelagueya Nilovna Vlasova. Revolutionaries by day and by night, revolutionaries in thought, word and deed, revolutionaries in the here and now and in the everyday, revolutionaries at the barricades and at clandestine meetings, revolutionaries who weep because they have not given up on love and poetry, revolutionaries in quiet moments, revolutionaries who know when to be quiet and went to go about things quietly, revolutionaries who keep shield hearts so the pulse of the collective will not fade or waver, revolutionaries who don’t necessarily use terms of address such as comrade or sahodaraya but are deeply conscious of solidarity, revolutionaries who are mothers. At all times. Whether or not they have children.

Today isn’t Mother’s Day but it is all mothers’ day. As all days are. It’s international workers’ day. Human rights violations day. Earth wrecking day. Environmental destruction day. Water pollution day. All that and more. And, mother’s day. All mothers’ day.

And so, being a Buddhist, when I murmur every single day the following words, matu padam namamaham (I worship the feet of my mother), I think of and offer merit to all those who have been ‘mother’ to me throughout sansara and all those whose child I am yet to be, whether or not they’ve carried me in their respective wombs or will not in lifetimes to come.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

10 March 2023

Yet another mother’s day

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