Journalism of Courage
Shruti Paranjpe
To be a mom
Author Nancy Thayer once famously said,”Who is getting more pleasure from this rocking,the baby or me? Shruti Paranjpe echoes this sentiment after recently giving birth to a beautiful baby girl. “She is the apple of my eye. All attention is diverted towards her well-being and this feeling of being a mother cannot be expressed in words,” she says. A translator with Cognizant,Paranjpe feels she has become more responsible after becoming a mother. “I have to take care of another life now,she is dependent on me for everything. It has finally dawned on me why my mother would be so worried all the time when I was growing up. Even a slight cry from her flips my tummy,” she says. Remembering her days of pregnancy Shruti said that she went through a gamut of emotions. Talking about the experience of being an expectant mother Shruti says,”Whenever I would watch TV or go out for a walk I would speak to her telling her about everything that was happening around me while she was still inside me. I believed she could hear me.” Like every new mother,she has great expectations from her little angel. “I am waiting for the day she starts talking,I will give her a lesson or two in German,” Shruti quips. So how is this Mothers’ Day different for her. “This is my first Mothers’ Day as a mother and nothing beats the joy of holding my child on a day like this,which brings in the realisation of motherhood. I feel grateful to God for my mother who has always stood by me like a wall,” she smiles.
Mom to be
While Mother’s Day brings about different joys for moms of all ages,the thrill and adrenaline associated with being a would-be mother probably takes the cake of them all. Mixed with a feeling of nervous anxiety combined with the euphoria of motherhood,it is a feeling that would-be mothers cherish a lot. Lipi Chakraborty,who works as an assistant general manager with an international firm is expecting a child and as far as her own expectation with Mother’s Day goes,she says,”There is nothing in particular right now that I am excited about,other than the fact that there is a baby coming. In the years to come,my kid might celebrate the occasion in a far more different manner. Maybe by that time it will be about gifting one’s mother fancy gadgets or something like that. When I was growing up as a kid we did not even know about the day. However once we began going to college and move around,the awareness came. For both me and my sister however,it was about spending the day with our mother and probably taking her out for dinner or surprising her with a home cooked meal and either a hand made gift or give her something that she really needed.”
Ravish Kaur- Amarpreet Kaur
Law of motherhood
Daughters are the best friends one can have and my daughter is also special to me but owing to social obligations she is now more a part of a different family. However,same social rules have blessed me with a wonderful daughter-in-law who not only fits perfectly into the picture of an ideal daughter but also reminds me of my own daughter,” says Kaur. For her daughter-in-law Amarpreet Kaur too it has been a wonderful experience to have her as the second mother. “I am a mother now and I understand how we have been to our own mothers hurting them every now and then. Thankfully with my mother-in-law around,I have got another opportunity to become a better daughter,” says Amarpreet Kaur. For Ravish Kaur,Mothers Day is an occasion when mothers can re-feel their motherhood and understand its depth that it is not only about loving their own children but about loving every child as she says,”Women are blessed with the quality of spreading love and therefore they are mothers.” On the occasion of Mother’s Day Amarpreet has a lot of plans for her mom-in-law as she says,”Although every day is special with mum around,Mother’s Day comes as a reminder of those emotional vows that we tend to forget in our daily lives.”
Deepali Kumta
Adopting motherhood
Keya means a flower and we named her this because she has brought a lot of fragrance in our lives,” says Deepali Kumta as she describes the bond between the mother-daughter duo that surpasses a blood relation yet connects them so well. For Kumta,a social worker who had joined Bharatiya Samaj Seva Kendra (BSSK) as her first job adopting a girl child was a dream. “I had a thyroid problem because of which we did not want to take a risk and when I discussed on adopting with my husband,he took it too well and after a wait of four years the dream was materialised and we got Keya home while she was a six months baby,” says Kumta who had also grown up with an adoptee seeing her closely. A bubbly girl,Keya is in class one and has been learning Kathak since she was three years old. Kumta believes a girl child gives back in multiples and is always attached to the parents,which she is already experiencing as she adds,”She knows about her adoption and that BSSK is her first home. She has taken it very positively and the connection between us is so strong that the factor does not even strike us in our routine life. Everyone around us have accepted her too well and parenting her has been one of the happiest things for me.”
