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(S)mothering and Othering
Gayatri and the Dynamics of Motherhood
Gayatri and the Dynamics of Motherhood
The mother is given the highest place in the Hindu culture, primarily as her role is seen as one that requires a lot of sacrifice. It certainly takes a village to raise a child, and therefore the challenging roles of the mother in bearing a baby and raising it to adulthood are highly eulogised in the dharma shastras (books on codes of conduct) and in the puranas (mythological stories). In Hinduism, and in a few other religions also, sacrifice of any kind is highly valued as a vehicle for personal and spiritual growth. While it is very important in the process of one's self-discovery to have a distinct sense of self and personality, it is equally important to have this identity be fluid rather than rigid. If one is too rigid in cultivating one's personality, one is constantly disappointed or angry as one is unable to accommodate to changing circumstances. Then again, being too willing to let go without asserting oneself is fraught with the danger of having stunted emotional growth and harboring resentment.
The concept of motherhood and sacrifice becomes very useful in maintaining this fine balance in the personality, thereby assuring that one continues to grow multi-dimensionally. Having a small child to care for can be very gratifying and can make one feel needed and useful. At the same time, one has to give up a lot of other things to care for this young being who is largely dependent on the caregivers for several years of its life. When this creative tension between balancing the challenges of sacrifice without falling into the trap of resentment and martyrdom is disturbed, it leads to dysfunctional dynamics between the caregiver and the off-spring. Either the parent becomes deeply resentful of the sacrifices made, and keeps rubbing it in the face of the off-spring throughout life (othering), or the parent becomes very proud of her own martyrdom and seeks to control her off-spring well into adulthood (smothering). We see both these tendencies in Gayatri, who is having a crisis of identity on many levels to say the least.
In the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, the Sage Yajnavalkya, in the course of imparting spiritual knowledge to his wife Maitreyi says unequivocally that objects of love become dear for one's own sake, not for the sake of the object itself. In other words, a mother loves her children not for the sake of the children, but for her own sake, because loving and caring for the children is itself a reward in the short and long terms. As PV is trying to show in the current track, the costs of not understanding this simple, yet poignant, truth are great. Like Gayatri, one can suffer from fallacious delusions and make choices that alienate the very people that one loves.
People in this forum have repeatedly commented upon how spineless Panx and Pratz are. They are spineless, but also really "checked out." Yes, they are present in the tensest of scenes, but more often than not, their presence is like the props in the background, rather than as animated people participating in the conversation, or being proactive in charting new territories in the relationship with their parents. They simply do not have room to do so, as both G3 and SP have domineering and controlling personalities (helicopter parents). Perhaps Yash also would also have gone this route but for the fact that he had a big wake up call in the loss of Arpita, which made him question things that he took for granted. We see clearly through PV how any possibility of self-discovery is snuffed out by the heavy mantle of servitude (disguised by lofty concepts such as "gratitude," "duty," "obedience," "respect," and "fulfilling an unfulfillable debt of love and sacrifice") the second generation is forced to don to "repay" the love and sacrifice, of the parents that has already paid for itself many times over. This kind of dysfunctional love is dangerous as it harms both the receiver and the giver. It harms the receivers by potentially robbing their agency, and by stunting their emotional maturity and expression; it harms the givers by rendering them unable to be in the present moment, to enjoy the gift of giving, as they are subconsciously trying to eke out a perceived return of their "investment."
This dysfunction is being played out particularly well with Akash's entry. Both Akash and Gayatri feel cheated out of what was due to them --in Gayatri's case, it was raising her own blood, and in Akash's case it is his name and legitimacy. Both mother and son are co-dependently feeding off of this frozen need of deprivation. Gayatri's feeling cheated out of the chance to have mothered Akash from the beginning is troublesome on three counts. Firstly, it hampers her appreciating Akash in the moment, and interacting with him spontaneously as she feels pressured by guilt to "make" up for years of her neglect through various tactics that were played out on the cricket turf. In Gayatri's eyes Akash must not be a loser, because if he is a loser, she is a loser too, so complete is her identification with him based on the fact that he is her biological son. Secondly, it leads to the infantilization of Akash, where his past and upbringing has been totally obliterated, upon his entry into the Scindhia household, and where he is constantly protected by Gayatri --in the name of (s)mothering-- from having to face the consequences of his own actions. Finally, the deprivation logicdetracts Gayatri from appreciating the "reward" of Yash, who she did care for, and who in his diligence and caring of her, has more than compensated for all the sacrifices that she made. Caught in the divisive politics of smothering and othering, Gayatri cannot be a mother to either Yash or Akash.
Anupamaa
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