NURTURE PORTFOLIO LIKE A GARDENER

 

            

                               

            Empowering My Revered Mother

                                             .....1919   to   07.02.2015

To write a blog on sensitive topic that too when the central character  is my revered mother is quite challenging. After vacillating for sometime and having intense discussions with family members, I could  muster necessary courage and made up my mind  to go ahead. 

Smt. Gobindi ( alias Pyari Bai), my mother, was born  most likely in  1919 (no record of her exact date of birth available with us) or so in a reasonably good farmer family in a non- descriptive  village called Duratta, Tehsil Layyah (presently it is a  Distt ) in Pakistan. No formal or informal education. She was married to my father, who had a   little  literate background, in the year1935 or so in Layyah town. He, being  the  eldest son,  was  assigned the duties to assist his father  to take care of  family  shop in the town. However, on migration to India in 1947, all our family  assets were left  behind. No claim, whatsoever from Govt on  arriving   in India because of  lack of awareness and illiteracy.  Hence, parents had to  struggle a lot to bring up their children.

2. Friends please do not misunderstand me. The purpose of the blog is not at all to describe family background and their struggle. As we all understand, it  might had been common struggle and testing time for most of the families that migrated from Pakistan  during partition.      

3. Basic purpose of the blog is to understand  the Pygmalion effect "in house affairs management". In this wonderful concept, the household leader's ( generally father or mother as the case may be) positive expectations from the members may lead to improve and high standard performance. In the present article, my endeavor is to explain, in detail, how at times a child can equally contribute, substantially and effectively, towards development of certain qualities of one's parents too ie  a sort of reverse Pygmalion concept. Therefore, as stated in the beginning itself, my mother is a central character, per force, her personal traits may bound to appear in the article. 

4. On joining as Probationary Officer in 1980 in North East Circle of State Bank of India, my mother, on demise of father,  joined me in 1984 in Guwahati, Assam. Since both, me and my wife,  were bankers, used to leave for work by 9.30 am in the morning, she had to take care of my newly born baby alone in a new and unknown place. A place thousands of kms away from her house in Delhi. She was unable to interact/converse with neighbors and other people at large because of language handicap. She was not able to speak in Hindi or even Punjabi. Forget about local language Assamese. She could only express herself in Multani, her birth language. Of course, she could not read any magazine/book/newspaper. At the material time, Doordarshan TV programmes were available for a limited hours in a day. 

5. Despite her limitations such as non-literacy and language issue, she was exceptionally hard working lady. Her inner strength and courage to face life challenges that too single handed had hardly any match. She was of religious mind. So to over come her loneliness and boring  daily routine, we chalked out a plan  not only to keep her busy but to lead a qualitative life.  We thought to  exploit her religious  mindset and hard working attitude. Accordingly took on the responsibility of teaching her workable reading Hindi language. Hence purchased a Hindi Primer  and started teaching  her to recognize and understand Hindi alphabets i.e. क, ख, ग, घ जैसे देवनागरी वर्णमाला के अक्षर and later on gradually move to simple words. It was a challenge for us as well as for her. No doubt, in the beginning, all of us including my wife have to work very hard. But our persistent and consistent efforts coupled with my mother's zeal and learning attitude started yielding positive and wonderful results.

6. At the early stages of her recognizing , grasping and reciting Hindi alphabets, our endeavors were to make her read small kids' books such as चंदामामा  and चंपक. With the passage of time, we graduated her to make efforts to read  गीता जी in and श्रीरामचरितमानस   in Hindi at a snail pace. It was indeed a wonderful experience  for her to learn Hindi and try to read religious stories and books and that too at the age of 65+ years. At the same time, we also has tremendous satisfaction. A rewarding experience, indeed.

 

7. On my Inter-Circle transfer from North East to Delhi Circle, she continued to sharpen her newly acquired skill to read.  In fact, by this  time she started to take assistance of her grand daughter who started going to school. With the passage of time and in the company of her grand daughters,  she could learn a few routine words such as Sunday, cow, doggy, bed and so on in English  from grand daughters. She continued with the  practice to read religious books till she breathed her last in 2015 in Gurugram at the age of 94+ years. In our life, it is a matter of immense satisfaction that she could devote time for prayer of God by reading spiritual books.

8. In fact, she was a living role model for her for grandchildren to work hard and focused attention to succeed in life. Today, all her grandchildren are well established be it USA, New Zealand, Australia or in Delhi/NCR itself.                         

                                            *शत् शत् नमन*