In The Oldest Love Story anthology, mothers and daughters share poignant reflections on motherhood

In the column Let’s Talk About Women, Sneha Bengani looks at films, the world of entertainment, and popular media through the feminist lens. Because it’s important. Because it’s needed. And because we’re not doing it enough. * If being a woman in a man’s world is not self-effacing enough, get her married, straddle her with motherhood, and lo, her subjugation will be complete. The Oldest Love Story, a new anthology edited by Rinki Roy Bhattacharya and Maithili Rao, looks at the thorny road that mothers tread and the thanklessness of the job that often ends up emasculating them, making them invisible. The brilliance of this motley collection of personal essays is that it includes both perspectives—of the mother and the offspring. In its first section ‘Being a Mother: Rewards and Regrets,’ several literary, film, and art icons such as Shashi Deshpande, Lalitha Lajmi, and Kamala Das recount their experience of motherhood—the struggles, the snarls, and everything in between. On reading Deshpande write in her essay, “When I became a mother myself, I knew that childbirth is not only a hideously painful process but a cruel and ugly one as well,” I was reminded of a cousin who recently gave birth to her first child. We were visiting her parents on Diwali when I saw her wave excitedly at me from a closed glass window. She looked like a caged animal smiling warmly at me, wanting attention. A few minutes later, I was sitting on her bed, her room stinking with stale urine and child poop. An aayah was cajoling the newborn, who was crying incessantly. I looked at her, this 27-year-old, now ballooned up to over 100 kg. I asked her how she was. She said she was deep in post-partum depression. “I have become an elephant,” she started. “Everyone expects you to feel this instant, other-worldly connection with your baby. But I feel nothing. I know I have given birth to him, but he feels like a total stranger. I would give anything right now to stop him from howling like he does all the time,” she added, frustrated, tired, hurting. Her delivery had not been easy. Courtesy of all the weight she had put on during pregnancy, she had to undergo a c-section, which went terribly wrong because of medical negligence. Her hand was still blue and swollen from all her time at the hospital. But when I asked her what had been the most difficult about the whole birthing process, she said, “Not being able to talk to my husband.” He was living with his parents in another city. She, meanwhile, had come to hers for the delivery. Other than restricting her physical movement to her room, she was made to drop contact with the outside world, her husband included, other than the perfunctory essentials of course.

In her chapter, Deshpande writes, “I learned that nothing comes naturally, not even breastfeeding. You have to learn how to do it, you have to work at it. And the worst blow of all was that I realised that I didn’t suddenly change and become an entirely different person when I became a mother. Except for the burden of this new tie, I was the same person I had been earlier; nobility and goodness didn’t suddenly descend on me. What was even worse was that I found out that motherhood is a state of vulnerability; you are now wide open to pain.” In the book’s second section ‘Our Mothers: Love, Empathy, and Ambivalence,’ famous daughters look back at the lives and the choices of their mothers. Some with dissatisfaction, others with anger, and a few with nostalgia. It includes poignant and evocative contributions from dignitaries like Shabana Azmi, Bharati Ray, and Mannu Bhandari.

These women reflect with unsparing honesty on the mute tolerance, unquestioning loyalty, and unflinching devotion of their mothers towards their husbands and in-laws.

In her essay, Bhandari narrates in heartbreaking detail the cruelties and injustices her mother endured, first at the hands of her tyrannical mother-in-law and then an egotistical husband. She starts with how her grandmother confined her mother—then only 12-years-old—to the stairs of their home for six months because of her imagined superstition that a dog may have chewed on the end of her saree. And hence, she needed purging. Her mother lived and even slept on the stairs like an untouchable, completely ostracised for the entire duration, not once allowed a bath or a dignified meal the entire time. Later in the essay, she reveals that all her father’s magnanimity was reserved for others, never for his own wife or children. How typical. My grandfather was just the same. So is my father. His time and attention are strictly reserved for others. He loves it when his house is filled with people, all of them praising its opulence and the sumptuous spread prepared by his wife painstakingly sometimes for over three days. Leave him alone with his wife or children, he’d not know what to say. As dependent as he is on my mother for everything, he never praises her for her culinary prowess, which is unparalleled, or any of her other remarkable talents. One day, after a particularly hearty meal, when he didn’t utter a word of appreciation, I confronted him. He simply said, “It doesn’t make a difference to me. I’d be equally happy if you give me a dry roti and banana for a meal.” One of my school friends visited us recently. Married for less than a year, he was frustrated, sandwiched between the wants of his mother and wife. His partner, who he said had no intention of taking up a job when they got married, suddenly wanted to work, sending into disarray all his plans for them and conjugal harmony. “What should I do, Uncle?” he asked my father. A 55-year-old man married for 32 years, my father advised him sagely, “Have a baby. Your problem would be solved.” I want to think of motherhood as the oldest love story. But I just cannot bring myself to. For any kind of love requires agency. It should have a deep sense of want. With motherhood, that is rarely ever the case. Of all the women you know, how many became mothers because they really wanted to? Most just wordlessly, unquestioningly slip into the role, taking it as a given. Just like their place in a man’s world. Even if we know fully well what it would do to us, we try to embrace it, take it in our stride. So what if it robs us of our individual identity, thwarts our personal hopes, and stultifies our ambitions, we’d still celebrate it as the oldest, greatest, purest love story. When not reading books or watching films, Sneha Bengani writes about them. She tweets at @benganiwrites. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.