Motherless children

Our little ones have such huge dark eyes that the shock within seems magnified stark and clear. Judging by the many requests for adoption po...

Our little ones have such huge dark eyes that the shock within seems magnified stark and clear. Judging by the many requests for adoption pouring in for the tsunami children, it seems a great spring of human kindness and responsibility is welling out. However, the authorities are quite right to be concerned about sexual exploitation and hopefully, will be extremely careful.

Does Hindu scripture contain any clues on how to deal with children except as necessary sons only to save the father from a hell called 8216;8216;put8217;8217;? Not much, really, apart from urging kindness in general. Meanwhile, in the ages that followed, the New Testament has Jesus say, 8220;Suffer let little children to come to me8221; and the Koran Sharief takes a very stern view indeed of female feticide.

The present Kanchi acharya broke with centuries8217; old tradition by starting a hostel for destitute girls, the first-known sanyasi to do so. His intention was to atone for centuries of patriarchal bias, but given the sleazy unsubstantiated allegations peddled against him, he might as well have saved himself the bother. Meanwhile the tsunami children now share the horrible affinity of having to grow up motherless with any one in fact who lost a parent, especially a mother, in sudden, unnatural circumstances.

Perhaps many of us would rate growing up motherless as one of the bleakest experiences endured by humankind? Some fathers do try manfully to cope but usually, Indian fathers can and do escape emotional responsibility. A number of motherless children secretly wish that if God absolutely felt the need to take away a parent, then couldn8217;t Mother have been spared to them? Who else could be so hands-on? Sounds selfish? But that8217;s how we as a species are wired. Children want that protection and caring. Parents have to protect. This logic dictates the apparently 8216;8216;selfish8217;8217; choice made by motherless children between father and mother. But look how it applies in reverse. Parents automatically exert themselves more to protect the younger child. They may lie, cheat and steal without a qualm to protect the interests of younger children but turn an amazingly blind eye to the rights of the elder who is equally vulnerable but loses the care advantage because of being notionally 8216;8216;older8217;8217;. The most haunting example of this is the mother who had to choose between saving her elder son and younger son in the tsunami. She chose the younger because he was weaker and let the elder go. Miraculously, he was saved. What will their lives be like now, after this irrefutable evidence of how motherless he was in the final analysis?

Ragul Maharaj, who tends the Gangaji temple on Dasashwamedh Ghat in Kashi was right after all: 8220;Ram Naam saga, baki sab daga8221;. Only God8217;s Name is ours, the rest are alien.