Pritam's Blog
Selflessly Straightforward And Honest
15 minutes back I was talking to my mom.
I asked her, “Mom, you never supported me when I wanted to join this journalism course. You said you were scared, for journalism is risky. Now that journalists are being beaten up in broad daylight, that too by lawyers, you don’t seem to be worried about me? Don’t you love me anymore?”.
And she said, “I can’t stop loving you, can I? But fear is bad. It is because of fear you had to choose engineering, and we had put that fear in you, which we regret… It is because of fear people keep mum to all the injustice being done to them, and things don’t change… And it is because I was myself a fearless woman that I could fight my family, my father and my in-laws, and I became self-dependent, and provided a better life to you and your brother… Development, mental or physical, of an individual and society, demands being fearless… And so I can’t stop you for the fear of losing what I have achieved… As for journalists being beaten up in broad daylight, yes, I am worried about you. But then again, development is the purpose of humankind. But it is always associated with Intolerance. And Intolerance should be fought, if not by you, then by someone else. Why should Kanhaiya and his mom suffer alone? Yeah, yeah, I know he wasn’t a journalist, but that’s not the point.”
And I cried. Yes, I did. This was the first time she had been so selflessly straightforward and honest…