Few things can
shake us out of our collective apathy, but the death of a 4-year-old, murdered
by his mother has done the job. Public fury continues to mount as gruesome
details are dutifully doled out by the media around the clock. People find it
impossible to process the fact that a mother could do this to her child. After
all, in India, we firmly believe that all mothers are miracle workers capable
of juggling a billion demands, candidates for goddesshood, and master chefs who
can whip up mouthwatering feasts in seconds. We turn a blind eye to the fact
that it is a thankless, gruelling job which requires superpowers that no woman
is blessed with or that few if any can do it without breaking down on a daily
basis or plotting desperately to open a portal into an alternate dimension
where newborns become fully – functioning, toilet - trained adults within
seconds of birth so that their moms can get back to having a real life.
Yet, murderous
mothers are not as rare a phenomenon as we conveniently like to think. A quick
Google search reveals that there are too many cases where children have been murdered
by their not so loving mums. In 2023 alone, an unmarried teen mother from Navi
Mumbai allegedly killed her newborn by throwing the baby from her bathroom
window; an 8-year-old was poisoned and killed by his mother, for having seen
her in a compromising position with their neighbour; in Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli,
a mother poisoned three of her children, following a domestic dispute; at Halvi
village near Kurnool, a 3-year-old and 6-month-old were killed by their mother following a domestic
dispute. If one has the stomach to go back further in time, there are many such
harrowing cases featuring killer moms. Some like Indrani Mukerjea (who allegedly
had her daughter, Sheena Bora, murdered by throttling) are famous and far from
languishing in prison may be spotted at literary festivals while others don’t
quite manage to capture public fancy but may have also eluded the less than
exacting arm of the law.
Murder by mom, is
not the only issue plaguing our poor kids. Different forms of child abuse are
prevalent with child pornography and sexual exploitation of minors for
commercial purposes on the rise. Millions of children across India are denied
access to education, healthcare, clean water, or a home that is not a
biohazard. The issue of childcare and child rights hereabouts is lamentable at
best and the situation gets grimmer by the day.
In the meantime,
we are content to pretend that it is mainly a mother’s job to ensure the safety
of her child and that ‘natural’ maternal instincts will suffice to work
miracles and keep the forces of evil at bay. If that were not bad enough, we
will also pressure people to bring forth babies by the dozen irrespective of
whether they have the emotional or economic resources to do the hardest job in
the world, uncaring that the stakes are too high, and we cannot carry on
allowing children to pay the price for adult folly.
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