WHERE WOMANLINESS WINS

WHERE WOMANLINESS WINS

She was the epitome of womanliness, the model for present-day and future womanhood. Bashful, yet unbelievably strong and resolute in her purity, she neither needed to advertise herself nor lose her natural modesty and motherly grace to do her seminal work of transforming the tenor and tempo of modern civilisation, its very character and fibre. Nor did she have to breed by the billions as has been ungraciously suggested in sarcasm by an offensive observer on the unfortunate fate of the generality of women, nor had to merely mop the floor, fly the Rafael, win Olympic golds or sift through pitchblende to die in the act of discovery of radioactivity, although she did fly to limpid spaces of consciousness in her spiritual flights that carried her where the Rafael never reached, she did mop up the tears of humanity fallen low in the basement of life, she did win unheeded, unseen laurels on behalf of world womanhood and she did become the mother of all humanity beyond a measure of doubt or distinction as has been testified by her own self. And all this she did with a grace and dignity that bore the gentle, soft touch of a fragrant flower, yet bore fruition in future flora that nourished all life.

Her life was one that women must study, absorb and emulate. This was her divine mission, the awakening of world womanhood, and it was after her earthly advent that the liberation of women the world over began. This is no arbitrary statement of mine born in devotional over-exuberance that seeks to glorify one's spiritual ideal but a profound observation of the prophet of modern times, Swami Vivekananda.

Mother, the embodiment of Adyaashakti, the Primal Power, yet soft and serene in her silken femininity that caressed life even as it enlivened it, bore it all, the rigours of earthly encasement, with a singular grace, poise, dignity, surpassing patience and a limitless love that has endeared her to all of posterity, her children in the womb of futurity. To achieve what she did in a single human span, she did not have to rough up people the wrong way nor exhibit herself unduly nor ever grudge her silent services in tireless trudging through her routine hours but she did what she did, epitomising all that was best in traditional Hindu womanhood with a matchless modernity of outlook that was unthinkable then as coming from a Braahman girl, young woman, wife, widow and spiritual mother in her years of mature concern.

She laid down the norms of womanhood in its synthetic simplicity, in its vast compounded complexity stretching millennia into the past and millennia into the future, and in its activated illustration in her own life in such a manner that the modern woman may find in her the perfect exemplar of all that femininity, womanliness and motherliness stand for in all their depth and grace.

Written by Sugata Bose