Oh, Mothers!

Sorry to generalise but the following trend of mental activity is triggered almost or totally in mothers when they see negative news of their sons flashed in the media. If the publicity is spawned due to positive images as winning an award or coming first in a feat, scholarly or otherwise, it is okay and no one is more jubilant than the mother who brought him out into the world. But if it is the world of nefarious activity including terrorism that has given him the fame or illfame, then blood soils their hands and who sheds buckets of tears in incomparable agony? The answer is mother.

Very few mothers disown their sons though I have a dim memory that the family of Osama Bin Laden including the mother totally disowned him after his murderous feats began to go public. The disowning act itself no doubt would have been heartrending.

The mother's, that is the average mother's first thought could be,(unless she herself is a "man-eating vampire), "Oh.Son.Did I bring you to this world for you to commit such dastardly crimes ?"

To reiterate, the anguish of the mother supersedes the anguish of all other parties concerned. If the mother is of a brooding and contemplative nature, she will begin to bother her poor head as to what actually went wrong with the child's upbringing. Didn"t I give him enough attention? Wasn't his education good enough? Why wasn't I more observant about those he associated? The truth is that the son has gone out of control since his adolescence.

Massive world

You simply cannot pocket him inside your tummy now. He is physically too big for that and now has begun to wander too much all by himself in this massive world. He meets varied characters, some good, some evil and he succumbs to the new influences as his destiny would have it. Embroiled in kitchen drudgery and other chores and duties you cannot expect a mother to trail behind him on the hunt to spy where he goes and whom he associates. The mother is in the blues as to what has to be countered especially for the less discerning one, he is still the innocent blue eyed babe.

Excuse me again, I am limiting myself to the male gender or 'the sons' for it is obvious that in the world of crime, males dominate and that for a variety of reasons, that augurs well for the female kind. Just to list a few, they are less mobile, less exposed to external influences, less prone to taking risks and even more ethical. It has almost come to the point when one could exclaim, "Beget daughters! It is much safer". But it is needless to say that the human race to propagate itself is in dire need of sons to go on, of course good sons, the better.

Suffering mothers

An incredible multitude of suffering mothers in the present world can be cited as examples. But to conserve space, I will limit myself just to two. And that too from terrain across the oceans. Thousands of our own native sons have been misled into joining many a volatile cause and finally have ended up their lives in the most horrible circumstances. I purposely omit them here for the same space-conserving reasons.

Now to come back to my two examples. Actually it was a newspaper feature that made me write this. The article was titled, 'Norway killer's mother dies'. The killer, a 37-year-old son, named Andre Behring celebrated the "Demonism" growing within him by killing 77 people in a terrible massacre. Naturally the law apprehended him and he is in prison now. Penitent? Could be.

The subsequent account however baffles me for it reads that his 66 year old mother paid a visit to him in prison when he has declared that he would like to attend her funeral. Could it be, that he circuitously implied that he wished her to die for not imbibing the correct values in him?

Or perhaps prison life had confused him. The newsitem goes on, " He was allowed to say goodbye to his mother. They both knew it was the final meeting" That intuition too is puzzling.

What premonition made them aware of the imminent end of the mother for she actually died months later at the mere age of 66. Perhaps she got overwhelmed by the sight of her son languishing behind prison bars. "Ah, my son", her heart would have cried out. "Did I rear you for such an end?" But unknown to her, he had cultivated what seemed a glorious motive, that of overthrowing European governments and replacing them with patriotic regimes that will deport Muslim immigrants. But even the Muslim militant associations had denied involvement with him. He had built up his own hate world by himself and very illogically ended 77 youthful lives to broadcast his mission.

Hate world

That hate world he built his mother never knew. Facts reveal that she had brought him up more or less as a single mother and that they have had a very good mother -son relationship. But his world, the hate world he had built she never knew.

Then there is the more recent episode of the two Boston murderers, two beautiful youth, the younger one babyish enough to be cuddled, curly hair and round innocent eyes. But they turned devils owning to the influence of a hate advocate and religious fanatic. He had been capable of getting the boys to stop their normal hobbies as music and boxing. Murder, he taught them.

The mother in far off Chechniya, adjacent and subservient to Russia was totally unaware of the mental transition of her two children. She had been in a blissful state, with her two children studying in America. A rare chance. She would have trumpeted the success to her neighbours. But soon she is devastated as she receives the news that her two children, aged 26 and 19, one a medical student and the other an engineering student have sullied their name in global news as the Boston Murderers. One is already dead,other imprisoned and in the jaws of death.

The Chechnyan mother wails, "This cannot be. My sons are not capable of this deed. This is an American conspiracy."

What is going on in this mother's mind? She is going back to the blue eyed babes she delivered a few years ago. Never can she think that they could end up as perpetrators of the second deadliest terrorist attack in a mighty country. The demon who influenced her sons on their brief life's voyage, she had never met.

Coming back home, there is the recent incident of an A/L student in a well-known Colombo school stabbing his classmate to death. The mother of the victim had been hospitalised the same day due to shock. The other mother too would have called to all the gods to find out how his young son turned a murderer. Oh! mothers! It is a universal tragedy indeed! As a mother myself, I share their sorrow.