EPITOME OF GENEROSITY

“Generous” as the word itself says “the quality of giving anything more than you ask for or the quality of giving anything in plenty”. Now when we add the word “selflessly” to the above meaning, a synonym for the word “generous” can be derived which is “MOTHER”. This is the story of one such selflessly generous mother named “Ahalya”.

Ahalya was born in a typical orthodox Iyer family dwelling in the beautiful city of Tanjore, in the state of Tamil Nadu. At a very young age of 4, she lost her mother and was brought up with immense warmth and affection by her grandmother. This made her realise the value of a mother and therefore, at a very young age, she decided to herself that she is going to be the best mother to her children. After finishing her basic schooling, Ahalya got married and moved to Bangalore along with her husband, who was an exceedingly egoistic, narcissistic, unresponsive and irresponsible man which she barely knew before marriage. Initially she was disturbed and struggled to adjust in such uncomfortable atmosphere with no one understanding her, but eventually she accepted it and moved on with her life. After a year, she gave birth to her first son, and within 3 years she was blessed with a second son. After all the struggle, poverty, living with a disrespectful husband and a meaningless life, these were her best years as she recreated meaning to her life by evolving into the best version of herself, that is being the best mother to her children. But she was not lucky enough to enjoy this beautiful period for a long time, as her husband would always wade into financial difficulties and she had to run errands to save him from all of it. That’s when she decided to become a baby sitter and also started working as a freelancer on a small scale to earn some extra money to support her family. She was an excellent baby sitter and through this profession, she earned wonderful friends.  

Now came another important phase in Ahalya’s already difficult life. Her children were growing day by day. Her first son was a slow learner but a kind hearted pure soul, as his mother, where as her second son was an adamant, brave and bold kid and excelled in academics. As Ahalya had absolutely no help from her husband both morally and financially in bringing up her children, she struggled to encourage and fulfil their dreams and talents at every stage of their growth, especially her second son who had innumerable wants and desires and who was also adamant enough to get what he wanted.Time passed by, her elder son couldn't complete his education as he was a slow learner. Her younger one who was extremely brilliant excelled in his education and finally things got better when he was placed in one of the world’s biggest companies and started earning big money. And her first son got himself a small job which paid him a decent salary to run the house.

A couple of years later, Ahalya realised that it was the right time to extend their family by bringing in new members, yes she was thinking of getting her sons married to kind hearted girls who would take the family forward on a righteous path. Unfortunately she couldn’t find a right match for her first son as he was not well educated and was in a small job which is considered to be the biggest criteria to reject a guy by our Indian society. Eventually, she got her second son married as it was not so difficult to find a match for him. This brought Ahalya’s life completely upside down again as her daughter-in-law was extremely poisonous, disrespected everyone and never mingled with the family whole heartedly. Due to a lot of unrest which was created in the house, her second son also started to bad mouth his parents and brother and slowly detached himself from the house and stopped bothering about the person who was most responsible for his struggle free life ;his mother. Ahalya had already lost the support of her husband but was just living with him. The only person who cared a bit for her was her elder son.

This kind of depressive environment in the house and ruthless behavior towards her by her most loved son and so called husband put her into serious mental illness. She went into extreme depression. She was getting weaker both physically and mentally, but there was no one to ask about her well-being at this point. She was fighting this battle all alone. She kept on working for the house, and her family kept on extracting more and more from her mercilessly. One day she fell ill and was taken to the doctor by one of her closest friends as no one in her family bothered about her anymore.

The most selflessly generous pure soul who struggled every bit of her life with a sole intention to improve her family condition, pull her kids out of restricted living condition, to give them the courage to dream, to make them stand on their own feet by imbibing a thought of free living in their minds with all the comforts unlike her own life was at the end discarded, boycotted, disregarded and uncared for, for the only mistake she made, was loving her family unconditionally and never asking anything in return.Does this mean that, nobody wants to recollect or remember her selfless service?

Now this strong willed mother, is fighting this biggest battle of regaining all the love from her family once again with all her might. After knowing the true story of Ahalya, I felt a strong sense of agony deep within, as I see most people especially the present generation; “PLAN” to extract the maximum of anything mercilessly and selfishly from those who are willing to give selflessly, Whether it is from the mother nature, kind people, friends, loved ones or even our own mothers.

As the famous proverb says “ Charity begins at home”, let us all try to respect , love ,understand and care our very own tangible creator who is “MOTHER” who was also once a normal human being, as soon as she understood that she is a mother, she no longer lived the same ordinary life. She became a totally different person forgetting about herself and completely thinking about her children’s well-being. Therefore let us all make a sincere effort to keep this beautiful creation of God almighty always happy by being sensitive enough to understand her thoughts, needs and pains just by being responsive to her stimulus.

"MOTHERS"  are the real proof to the existence of God in the world we live in. Therefore let us bow down, love and respect this priceless creation.

Just think about it

One way love, one way service, one way goodness, one way kindness, one way sacrifice and one way compromise will never create any difference in mankind. The collective efforts of each and every one belonging to this human clan can only make a difference in the way of life we all live. The creator has created this blissful and splendid beauty called “LIFE” to further enable his creations to create a better world by respecting, loving unconditionally, helping each other selflessly, walking in the path of righteousness, encouraging and lifting up our fellow beings in need and ultimately spreading the goodness within ourselves and to each other. 

Practicing this, may make our life way simpler to live, don’t you think so?