When Will Mothers Receive The Perfect Gift Of Knowing Their Daughters Are Safe?

This poignant post imagines what Mother’s Day must be like for a mother who lost her daughter due to the depravity of men who see women only as objects for the taking.

As I see my social networking pages flooded with Mother’s Day notifications, my mind goes back to the one mother whose face I could not take out of my mind. Everytime I saw her face I felt for her, I felt an urge to reach out to her and say, “I feel your pain as a mother and I am with you”. I am talking about the mother of Nirbhaya, the ‘daughter of India’. Here is my ode to this unfortunate mother who must be missing her daughter the most on this day, when everyone is celebrating motherhood.

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I reminisce of the days when she was a little girl clinging on to me, looking for comfort and security. Then, she grew up; she grew up to become this wonderful, vivacious and opinionated girl who wanted to make a mark of her own. She wanted to be a doctor. I stood by her side and beamed with pride when she became one. Like any parent, I was overjoyed to see my little girl turn into a confident young doctor.

I felt happiness flowing into my house in leaps and bounds from then on. But, destiny played its evil hand and the unforeseen, the unimaginable happened. It was something so disastrous, that it shook me and eventually broke me.

It was something which I do not want any mother to witness.

I can still vivdly remember the faraway look in her eyes when I saw her lying on that hospital bed almost five years ago. It seems like yesterday. Yes it does, because time has failed to heal the wounds of this distraught mother.

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Yes, I am the mother of Nirbhaya, the ‘daughter of India’. As another ‘Mother’s Day’ makes its presence felt, I feel a void, a big haunting void in my life. My little girl, who, I protected all those years, could not be protected that fateful December night. Can someone be as monstrous as those men?

Oh, how I wish I could go back in time and do something to save my daughter.

But I live on. I live on because I have her memories to fall back on. I live on because I want things to change.

And I am hopeful that they will. There will come a time when mothers will not feel afraid for the well-being of their children at any hour of the day. There will come a time when the mindsets of men will change and women will not be seen as a piece of flesh but as human beings. Slow it may be, but the transformation will happen.

And yes, that would be the best gift you could give a mother on Mother’s Day.

Disclaimer: This is where I try to put myself in someone else’s shoes and make an earnest attempt to gauge Nirbhaya’s mother would be feeling on this day. On this Mother’s Day, this is my ode to a mother who had to face the most difficult ordeal as a mother.

First published here.

Image via Pixabay

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