LIFE AS IT IS

W hen she sleeps in my lap, I gaze at her. I gaze at her because I still find it hard to believe that I carried her for nine months. I touch her soft hair, her tiny fingers and toes, I pull her little round nose, I squeeze her cheeks and gently massage her arms. No, nothing wakes her up. She squirms for a few seconds but does not become fully awake. She perhaps knows that she is in a place that is as safe as it can be. The pain was harrowing, nothing I ever felt before. The twenty-three hours of labour seemed like twenty-three days of suffering. Her back was against my back when her back should have been against my belly. The result? Back-breaking labour. Yes, I had back labour, which is far more painful that normal labour. I thought I would pass out. A few times I thought I would die giving birth to my daughter. In spite of everything it was the first time in my life I thought I was strong. I always had an idea that I was physically weak but the birth of Wareesha just blew that idea a...

MOTHERS are protective; they are protective by nature. Mothers shield their offspring, try to keep them out of harm's way every time, all the time. Mothers want the best for their children for sure. However, some mothers are not only protective, they are 'overprotective' about their kids. While a mother's protectiveness is instinctive and critical to a child's survival, is a mother's 'overprotectiveness' desirable or healthy for a child? Are there sometimes high costs associated with a mother's overprotective nature?  When Elora Roushan, 36, a full-time professional and a mother of two, was in her adolescence, she switched to wearing salwar kameez upon her mother's wish. A salwar suit accompanied by a dupatta was the only outfit she was allowed to wear outside. While her friends always wore jeans, she almost never wore them on the streets of Dhaka. Today, she believes that her mother's overprotectiveness made her a shy person and af...

Motherhood has instilled in me a different type of emotion, an emotion whose existence I was unaware of in those pre-mommy years of life. Today, when I see suffering children, turbulent emotions rupture my heart. Sometimes, I shed tears in silence. I ask myself if all this emotional overflow is because of my new identity as a mother. Perhaps. Every child deserves a happy childhood. But to millions of children around the world, "happiness" is a word that carries little or no meaning. Many a child’s childhood is snatched away at such an early age that they never know what it feels to go to school five days a week, eat three good meals a day, or sleep without having to worry about their houses being blown up by enemy troops. In any conflict, it's the children who suffer the most. When I see images and video footages of living and dead children of Palestine and Syria, I sit still before my computer and know not what to feel. Sometimes I wonder what I myself would have ...