Becoming Your Own Mother
A couple of weekends ago I checked into Prakruti Chikitsalaya, a nature cure clinic about
200kms from Bangalore in Mandya district. The three-acre campus lives up to its
name with cottages dotting the outer edge with the kitchen cum dining area as its
central hub.
A doctor couple checks me out and lists the treatments my
specific condition calls for. What’s common to all ‘patients’ checked in here
are the yoga sessions in the morning and evening and a low-salt, no spice, no sugar
diet. Which is good because you are in any case not tempted to ask for extra
helpings.
But for the times when your stomach protests too loudly between
meals there is the jamun tree. Anyone using the walking track has to pass by the
jamun tree which stands a little off the entrance of the Nature Cure Centre next
to the reception and doctors’ clinics.
Growing up in metro Mumbai, the Syzgium cumini in Latin or jamun or jambul as it is known in
Maharastra or ‘nerele hannu’ in Karnataka, or nava palam in Tamil Nadu wasn’t a
favourite fruit. It has an acidic spicy mildly sweet taste, leaving a purple
hue and rough texture on the tongue. But try being snobbish on an empty stomach
and you will begin to understand why our ancestors were fruitarians before they
cultivated food.
So I stood for a while under the jamun tree’s shade and
tentatively picked a couple of fruits that had fallen on the patch of satiny
grass. As I crunched into the juicy exterior and rolled the seed in my mouth I
thought it’s not as bad as I remember it. I ate a few more and felt a satiation
of my hunger pangs. I gathered a fistful and continued my walk.
I noticed a couple behind me stop by and go through the same
motions. A young girl who had earlier in the day been complaining of a
headache, apparently a result of not drinking enough water during the detox
period began pepping up visibly as she worked through her share of the jamun
bounty.
Of the 30 residents of the Nature Cure clinic walking that
evening almost every single one stopped by to partake of this free unlimited
nature’s feast. You may wonder just how many fruits does this tree shed in a
day to serve 30 people? Well, there’s a soft ‘thap’ ‘thap’ of falling fruit
every moment practically and whether you gather a fistful or a doggy bag’s
worth, rest assured the next person will never go empty handed.
As I pounded the walking trail I wondered about the
generosity of this tree and of all the other trees in the Universe. I wondered too about Mother Nature who
nurtures us. And who nurtures Mother Nature?
I skipped back a few
months to a Memoir Writing class in New York when a sprightly 80-year-old Anna
wrote about “learning to be my own mother” in an essay on ‘Parting is such
Sweet Sorrow’. Anna, who resides in a Senior Citizens Assisted Living Community
interpreted the topic to mean saying her final goodbyes. Although, for the most
part, Anna’s writing reveals her free spirit and a zany sense of humour in the
life choices she has made. Coming from her this sentence gave me pause for
thought.
At what age do human beings contemplate becoming one’s own
mother? I know I hadn’t up until then. I mean you have your mother to do that
until she’s alive and then you just think of yourself as a ‘motherless child’ even if by then you are
60 years old and have grandchildren of your own.
Is it possible then that Mother Nature has no such
expectations of the Universe? That Nature’s way is to nourish one’s own self by
connecting to the Universal synapses of energy? Consider, for example, the natural way of
cultivation that Masanobu Fukuoka, the Japanese naturalist, propagated where
you allow natural cycles of seasons and days to guide you to plant, nurture and
harvest rather than intervene as per ‘market demands’ for food.
There are times in our lives when we want a gentle hand on
our back reassuring us that all is well; a sweet hug that says I care for you
no matter what.
Then there are times when we blame our parents for the
unwanted excess baggage that we carry
and inevitably there are times when we get blamed by our children for the
excess baggage we have passed on to them.
The truth is that each one of us is on our own unique
journey, learning lessons from the souls that we interact with - some
intimately, others fleetingly. Working
out your karmic balance so to speak.
The truth is also that we choose the parents we are born to
because we have something to learn from them and they from us. When we say
nobody comes into your life by accident it extends right up to your children
and your parents, not just random visitors transiting through your life.
Even so the one constant in our life is always one’s own
self. If we hold others responsible for their impact on our lives how much more
impact do we have on ourselves? Total impact, it would appear. And what if the
ultimate learning is to give ourselves the acceptance, approval and compassion
that we expect from significant and sometimes not so significant others - connect
to the Universal synapses of energy in a manner of speaking?
So this Mothers Day I decided to give myself a gift. In
gratitude to the wonderful children in my life and and also because I recognise
that at the deepest level I truly am my own Mother. Just like Mother Earth who
rejuvenates herself taking from the elements what she needs and giving to all
forms of life – birds, bees, animals and humans what they need. So the gift on Mother’s Day was a gift of approval – self approval.
