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Ali Peter John
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I had never seen a mother building a house for her three sons in a jungle out of cow dung,mud, bamboo sticks and dry grass with used doors and holes in the walls as windows
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I had never seen a mother distilling liquor and sitting before a fire for hours waiting for the drops of liquor fall into a bottle and scared of the police raiding her house and arresting her
I had never seen a mother spending her day looking after her three sons and also looking after her business selling liquor to customers who were mostly male and also cooking and doing all the other work a woman does to keep her little family going
I had never seen a mother who was illiterate sending her sons to the best convent schools in the area and giving them the best education and making them grow into young man for the future
I had never seen a mother whose elder son had run away from home to join the Indian Navy and had gone missing during the Indo-Pak war of 1965 and had faith in her God that her son would be found and suffered silently till he was found and he was found
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I had never seen a mother praying to her God in a language (English)which she had only heard and never read or written and was sure that her God would listen to her prayers
I had never seen a mother who was also a mother to her pet dogs, Prince and Q who was served the same food she served her sons and the dogs were so faithful to her that the neighbours talked about "Mary Aunty's dogs who are as well behaved as her sons "
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I had never seen a mother who went into the homes where women were beaten up and
ill- treated by their husbands, other men and their families and made them see reason , even if it meant raising her hand against the the men to protect the women
I had never seen a mother who helped her neighbours and who had established her six sisters and two brothers and their families by finding them jobs in different parts of Bombay
I had never seen a mother who found stories of orphan girls who she made arrangements to send to an orphanage which was the best in the suburbs and saw to it that the girls grew up, got married in good families and even got good jobs
I had seen my first social activist, social worker and a crusader for the dignity of women and children
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I had seen the first mother who taught her sons how not to tolerate any kind of humility or being beaten up by stronger and richer boys and how she admonished her sons if they came home crying after being beaten up by someone and said, "you are not a coward. You are the son of Mary, go and find your revenge if you are right and then come home to me "
I had never seen a mother and a wife fights her best battle when her one-time rich husband, Haroon Ali had died suddenly and she had to make all the arrangements for his funeral, he wanted to be converted and my illiterate, poor mother not only saw that Haroon Ali was converted and had a new name, John and got him buried in a Christian cemetery with the entire village and his rich Muslim relatives and friends attending a Christian funeral for the first time
I had never seen a mother who cared for this son(me) so much that she worried herself about what would happen to me if she died and even had plans to get me married when I was eighteen.....
But ,alas ,it was a dream she could not fulfill in her life time and life has been tossing me around like a toy for the last fifty five years after she left me without giving me or anyone any trouble
I have been looking for her in other women and other mothers, it is a phenomenon not many can understand, but what does a son who has never really known what the love and power of a mother is do ? The only satisfaction I have is that I named the house she had built with her own hands as "M.Ali House" , the M standing for Mary ,the mother who I cannot find in any other mother not even in the mother of God who was also called Mary.
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