Elderly Women’s Exemplary Motherhood

Kashmir’s elderly women are known to have nurtured families with love, selfless devotion, and unwavering dedication. Not just symbols of constant source of strength, inspiration, and guidance to their children, they are the epitome of motherly devotion, embodying warmth, love, and a sense of security and belonging which shaped the lives of their children, leaving cherished memories behind.
While modern mothers balance careers, technology, and evolving societal expectations; our grandmothers preserved traditions and values in simpler times. Through their whispered lullabies, comforting hugs, inspiring stories or encouragements, their love had the power to heal, uplift, and transform lives in multiple ways, often without expectation of any reward or recognition. The renowned doctors, engineers, scholars, teachers, etc around today, is the outcome of those virtuous women’s whose exemplary motherhood should be written in golden words. Having inculcated moral values and discipline in their children; such mothers’ first priority remained, the transformation of their children into good human beings, not just degree holders fail to make their nation, great and strong.

Those elderly women practiced what they preached. They shaped their children’s character and behavior. They instilled in them the traits and values which they had themselves practiced. Despite sending their children to top-notch schools; they themselves worked on them, diligently and efficiently, to change them into responsible citizens. How ironical! Today, our society is full of cheaters, fraudsters, druggists, peddlers and even murderers which is unfortunately the output of our upbringing. Show me one person, been brought up by those grandmothers who turned a cheater or become druggists. None, I am sure. Because few decades back, motherhood was all together different. Even if many among them didn’t achieve great success, yet, they were good human beings, known for their virtues, determination, upright character, resilience and wisdom in their localities.

Never did those elderly mothers separate their children from them till values were instilled and limits were set in them. They believed their children’s future, their own duty, as the old saying goes, ‘the hands that rock the cradle, rule the world’. Unlike modern mothers, they didn’t finance their children. They, instead, taught them to be truthful, God-fearing, honest, diligent, respectful towards others, kind and helpful in all circumstances of life. Despite facing extreme hardships and poverty; they put in their best efforts to refrain them from social evils because they knew that ill gotten is ill spent, and that cheating has never benefited anyone. How aptly French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte has quoted: Give me good mothers, and I’ll give you good nations.

The modern society is devoid of responsible citizens which our righteous elderly mothers once simply raised. Nowadays, as mothers, we give out hefty amount as fee to seek our children’s admission in a top English medium institution. But we fail to mold them into good citizens for the society. From very early years, we send our wards to schools and dream to make them doctors and engineers, etc. But at the end, we, undoubtedly, reap otherwise. However, during our elderly mothers’ time, children were not separated from their mothers till they attained the age of 7 years. They were chiseled and nurtured by living in close proximity with their mothers, at a time, when joint family system was in vogue in Kashmir. However, currently, we have failed as mothers to raise responsible human beings in our societies. When mothers are revered figures like Hazrat Amina (Radiallahu Anha) and Hazrat Fatima (RA); sons, undeniably, turn out to be like Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and Hazrat Hassan & Hussain (may Allah be pleased them).

Kashmir is in dire need of mothers like those elderly women whose ideal motherhood was the embodiment of wisdom, resilience, spirituality, determination, and community building. Only then can we expect our future to be safe and secure. I am reminded of a witty couplet by Urdu poet Akbar Allahabadi: tifl mein aaye kya bo maa baap kay atvar ki, doudh to dibbey ka hai aur talem hai sarkar ki. No doubt, currently, mothers raise children to thrive, yet, they need to handle them, cautiously. Responding to their logics and sentiments isn’t bad; need of the hour is to instill in them discipline, patience, values of hard work, life skills, self-reliance, responsibility and making them socially capable which our elderly women once so heroically did. While contemporary mothers’ adaptability, strength, and determination pave the way for future generations, we need to recall ourselves the huge contributions and lasting legacies of those elderly mothers who make us proud even today. I conclude by quoting Prof. Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist who said: “children must be helped to become responsible, virtuous, and awake beings, capable of full reciprocity”.

Sayeesa Shaban hails from Sopore