I feel privileged that I'm witnessing one of the most exceptional form of human love - the divine bond between a mother and her infant. After seeing so many other forms of relationships I can say beyond any doubts that the chemistry between a mother and her child is made and blessed entirely by divinity. Much so because human psychology, emotional, physical and social needs or personal interests don't play any role in shaping up this bond as they very much do for other types of relationships.
- Like the die for feelings for friends in high school/college - when friends become cult and family members look like people sharing the same house. Name decided by parents get altered into something awful yet sounds very cool and is preferable over the original. Songs like "purani jeans" and "summer of 69" become anthem. Choices and priorities are driven by so called "my group". I also feel "those were the best days of my life" but now I realise the underlying phenomenon was the fulfillment of the craving to exercise the right to choose which didn't happen at the time of birth and upbringing. Central to this relationship is also the need of self discovery and identification through recognition and appreciation from the outside world. On an apparent side people see this hobnobbing as a result of sharing similar thoughts, hobbies and of course having fun and masti.
Then suddenly the heart starts beating, pituitary gland starts over working and rest of the actions and thoughts are controlled by Mr. Cupid. Friends don't excite any more, you start forgetting the past, stop thinking about the future, rationality, sanity, reasoning become words unheard of! Mankind hasn't been more enthralled by anything else than this form of acquaintance. In fact if Genesis is to be believed, attraction of the opposite sex is the first feeling that humans felt. If Darwin is to be followed then also sex is the sole reason behind partnership between any two adults of opposite sex. In todays social settings many other reasons also prevail behind this relationship strangest among them being peer pressure - someone who has crossed 18 and not seeing or dating anybody is considered to be a loner, retard, psycho and uncool.
Marriage is highly a philosophical subject and best be left for the experts to comment over it.
After having observed all above I strive hard to find out what dedicates a mother towards her baby, more than that what makes this union so pristine, free from desires, un-manipulative, so genuine, so complete. Neither the mother nor her baby understands each others' language but still they talk to each other endlessly. No other force on this planet is as powerful as this bond between a mother and her baby. It's primal and instinctive - none of them uses their brains or show special skills to entice or impress each other. Its purely out of instincts. Moreover it's only the mother who is always caring, nurturing, pain taking. The baby is not even aware of the effect it is imparting on it's mother and yet the mother goes all the way to keep the baby smiling and healthy. No other relationship could sustain on such grounds.
I don't mean to say it's a one sided relationship rather its more than a perfect symbiosis. Both mother and the baby have evolved together. It started with the conception and over the gestation both of them synchronized with each other completely. Now, after the birth they breathe, eat and sleep as a single functional unit. They are just structurally separate but physically and emotionally they are inseparable. It's hard to show who is dependent upon whom. No other love is so awe-inspiring.
I have seen the transformation, conscious and unconscious both, a woman goes through in the process of becoming a mother - physical, emotional, behavioral - the stakes, the compromises, the costs and the rewards! there are things she would never have attempted before but now she loves doing them. So the question that boggles my mind is what is that prepares her to go through and makes her enjoy this process. What is that keeps her awake all the night to pacify her baby and be fresh again the next morning to delightfully appreciate her baby's antics. From where does all this energy and motivation come?? another thing that mystifies my mind is that why can't the same relationship be realized between the baby and it's father?? no matter how much involved he is into this process he cannot be a part of this unspoken bond. He cannot make the baby react to him the way it reacts to it's mother irrespective of the amount of caring he feels for the baby.
Is it because the mother had a lead of nine months in knowing the baby as compared to the father and she and the infant were connected for a long time through placenta. Or is it because God chose to enable the mother to feed the baby. Neurobiology says it is the secretion of oxytocin and prolactin in the female body that governs the relationship between her and the baby. Anthropologists try to answer this through mammalian evolution. What ever the reasons might be I feel its an unjust that fathers are kept deprived of this spiritual feeling. Somehow if I could experience how does it feel to feed your own hungry baby and see it smile with milk smeared lips.
