Silence...

She says not a word, no matter how desperately he pleads. She just stands where she is, as she has for all these years. "Please, Mother! Call us back home. Let us be what we were before. I promise you I will never make the same mistakes again." He cries and he pleads but the Mother does not relent.

This article is an extract from the life of a young boy and the years he spent with his mother. He was neither the first nor the last child of his mother, but like every one of his mother’s children, he too was special. She did for him all that she had done for the rest of her children, and more than what she had done for some because he was a very special boy. When he was little she cared for him and gave him the comforts he so desperately needed, yet did not hesitate to use the stick when he got too comfortable. When he grew a little older, she taught him to believe in himself and imparted to him a strong value set which would be with him for a long time to come. As he morphed into a young man she taught him to test his strength in waters outside her and in most cases he succeeded with flying colours. When the time came for him to leave, she sent to him the most precious gifts she possessed – gifts which would keep his feet from faltering on the road. She did for him all that was in her power, while at the same time ensuring that her genius boy did not go overboard.
But one thing she could not cure him of, was his growing jealousy for her daughter. Like a poisonous rose it bloomed and pitched him into a stormy sea of infatuation. But the rose did not wilt nor did the poison lose its potency nor did the sea its storminess. The chains of time bound them together – the son, the daughter, the rose, the poison and the storm. Until that day when the storm reached its highest pitch and his ship broke into a thousand pieces all of them scattered by the stormy waters. Then just as he was about to drown, the mother pleaded with the sea to send him to the beautiful island she had prepared especially for her son and accordingly the sea washed the half dead boy ashore. By then the daughter’s ship had already reached the home of their mother’s sister. But the boy was sick for many days and could not stop vomiting the poison of love nor could he see much in the bright light on the island. Months passed and the poor boy could only plead to his mother, that she call him back, but mother would not say a word. But mother heard him and she dimmed the intense sunlight until her boy could look around him and he beheld the beauty of the island around. The storm was gone and so was the poison. The daughter’s ship could not be seen anywhere on the horizon, but the fragrance of crushed roses lingered.
Soaking himself in that fragrance, the boy now a man thanked the mother for all that she had done for him. The island was beautiful and he made many friends on that blessed piece of land. Until one day out of the blue there emerged the daughter’s ship on the horizon as it made its way back towards the land of the mother. The man looked towards the land of his mother and finally the soul mother spoke “…