Does He know a mother’s heart?

 

I have borrowed this title from Arun Shourie – the renowned journalist, author, ex-minister but ultimately a mortal human being.  I read this book many years back and though I may not remember it verbatim, its content has kept haunting me ever.

The book is about his special child and the physical and emotional stretch that the couple has gone through in their life in bringing him up. He has shared spiritual answers to anxious parents’ questions from exponents of different religions. But even as a reader, it is difficult to accept the principles of Karma or any other explanations coming from other religious advocates. More so, when you are the affected parent. And then you do doubt – does He know a mother’s heart?

I had another friend who had a special child. Like Shourie’s fears as to how would he carry his child as he got older, I have seen my friend struggling to carry his son – as both got older. My friend and his wife have braved the associated physical and emotional stress with a smile – apparently. But did He see inside a mother’s heart?

I had lost my sister under tragic circumstances and I have seen my mother’s pains to reconcile to that loss. She gave up on all celebrations and had never taken even a pinch of sweet after that for many years until she passed away. She never gave up on her prayers but having seen her unreconciled agony, I doubted if He knew a mother’s heart.

We are a Celiac parent. My wife, whenever she comes across a dish her daughter loved but she could no more take, she breaks into tears. Her eyes give a forlorn look, when my daughter carries a box of salad to her office parties -  so, she doesn't miss out on the gathering that she loves to move with. She looks at the page 3 eatery reviews with exasperation, the ones that mother-daughter bonded on in the past but now are out of bounds. Some tears drop from her eyes, some flow back deep into her heart. She gets hyper with her fears. She gets pained when others don’t even understand the intricacies and high level of meticulousness that maintenance of it requires. She keeps questioning on the rationale of such an injustice. And on those occasions, I too veer towards losing my faith – does He even know a mother’s heart?

The ’Karma’ theory is a de-leveler though. You are rich or poor. You are from any cast or creed. You are a lowly worker or a chief justice. The ‘Karma’ doesn’t seem to leave anybody. But we do see often that not all righteous people around us living a happy life and not all wrong ones being paid back by the ‘Karma’. The believers attribute this to the cross-life span of the ‘Karma’. And herein lies the disconnect. Unversed and doubters like me question the paradigm where the wrong-doers are not made aware of their wrongs in the same consciousness and in the same life. What good it is when a life ends without the realization of its wrongs and when the memories do not go across the two lives. In corporate parlance, it is like doing an appraisal without sharing the feedback.

In corporate world, I have seen bosses who would like you to be a faithful follower. You apply your mind or express your reasoning abilities countering his, you risk losing a privileged position. Does the spiritual world work the same way? Do we not have a right to question? When I see small children suffering, and the believers attribute this to ‘Karma’, I feel being let down. Is that the child’s ‘Karma’? or is that the parents’ ‘Karma’? Or, does He really not know a mother’s heart?