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How mum's beating became a blessing!
Whatever views one might hold on the maxim "Spare the rod and spoil the child", I feel that an errant child must be administered a dose of some kind of physical chastisement during his or her formative years.
- By Lalit Raizada, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:03 May 13, 2008
Whatever views one might hold on the maxim "Spare the rod and spoil the child", I feel that an errant child must be administered a dose of some kind of physical chastisement during his or her formative years.
That would set the child on the right track. I am saying this from my personal experience, which taught me a "good lesson" - for life.
I would have no hesitation in proclaiming from the top of the roof that had my mother not given me a severe beating with a "special" whip when I was a child, I would not have been taking regular bath every day - unfailingly - as I do today.
So be it severe winters or the rainy season, I don't miss my daily shower. The only exceptions are when I am either unwell or travelling for long hours or for some such other reason.
My "switch" into a regular bath-taker dates back to those times when I had been skipping a bath for as many as three to four days and was constantly chided by my mother.
I would instead be playing outside and managed to slip out of her grip every time. Perhaps she might have given me another day's reprieve but for one dangerous act that I committed. It only incensed her anger.
Tight rope walk
My mother saw me doing a tight rope walk on a 10-inch wide parapet on the top floor of our house. A slip could have thrown me on a vacant land about 60 feet below and certainly I would not have been here to write this piece.
Imagining the worst that could have happened to her eldest child, my mother lost her cool.
As a domestic help was bringing me down, she wrung some odd bits and pieces of a rope lying near her and turned them into a whip.
Her face and eyes were red as she began to lash me with it. I screamed my lungs out but no amount of appeal for mercy and forgiveness melted her. I got rashes and abrasions all over my body but she did not stop whipping me.
As I kept crying loudly, elders in the family arrived on the scene and chided my mother for the harsh punishment. And I was rescued. By now my mother had calmed down though she was still tense. When she spotted the injuries on my body, she started sobbing.
Evidently, she was remorseful. She hugged me tightly and both of us started sobbing. She gave me several kisses. It was a poignant experience for both of us. She told me that all this would not have happened if only I had listened to her.
The warmth of her body gave me great comfort. The motherly touch reduced my sobs to slow releases of painful sighs. Later, she applied some home remedy to my abrasions.
I had learnt a lesson the hard way. That day I decided not to commit any dangerous act again and two, take bath every day. I was wondering whether the corporal punishment had saved me from becoming disobedient and going wayward in the coming days of my adolescence.
In fact, in absolute contrast to those early days when I used to detest going near the water tap, I later developed so much love for it that I would jump into the river or into a tank that was used to store pumped up water for irrigation on the outskirts of my hometown.
In harsh summers, especially in the humid weather, I now take a bath even three to four times between 6 am and midnight.
In fact, some years after the incident, I read an article headlined something like "Teach your child to love lightning". It cast such a positive influence on me that during the monsoon I preferred to sleep under a tin roof of our ancestral house.
I would stretch myself on an old-fashioned cot in a manner that my feet regularly received a sprinkling of the rain. The noise made by the tin roof and my newfound love for lightning were bonus for me.
Believe me, I always enjoy such a sleep. But nothing can beat the warmth of my mother's tight hug that day. Even today, whenever I fall sick, I can almost feel the healing touch.
Lalit Raizada is a journalist based in India.
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