In about a week from now, my daughter’s school will be celebrating their annual day. And unlike my times when a select group of kids would perform on stage, these days every kid is proactively included in one or, the other performances in their annual day celebrations.
Strangely though, this time round my daughter who is otherwise an active participant in singing and dancing just decided not to perform. And it was surprising for us to see a 5 year old making a decision on her own. In spite of repeated efforts to convince her, she did not change her mind. And this point, as parents we were made to think as to why did we even want her to perform. Was it because she wanted to do it and she enjoyed doing it? OR, was it just because we wanted to see her on stage?
It was the latter because she had convinced us that the first part wasn’t there at all.
And after all of this, a day back I saw her lying down with her head resting on her mom’s chest and she talking her heart out. She kept talking about everything. In fact about a lot of things. And as they both spoke to each other both verbally and non-verbally, I could see a bond, an invisible one between them. And through this bond there was a lot that was being transmitted, which nobody in the world can ever decode or, understand.
It is not just human beings that you will find this bond – the bond between a mother and her child. In animals too, it is as strong as it is in us humans.
We were on a trip to Nandi Hills, a beautiful place where people flock to see the sunrise. It was about 10 AM and as we were sitting in one of the benches, we could see a lot of monkeys. People were putting eatables over to them and they were climbing down the trees to get whatever they could get their hands on.
Some of them fought to get their share and some others caught hold of whatever they could and took it to their loved ones to share it with them. As all of this was happening, I could see a mother monkey and a baby monkey sitting on the rocks. The baby monkey was enjoying the morning sun running around the rocks.
All of a sudden a few males monkeys started a brawl and then there was chaos all around. And soon all of them were fighting each other. The mother sensed danger. The baby monkey was still playing unaware. Suddenly, as if the mother sent a signal telepathically, the baby stopped and looked at the mother. The mother kept looking at the baby without uttering a word. A few seconds of looking at each other was enough communication between them. The baby ran towards the mother, jumped and held onto her belly and started feeding. The mother slowly moved away from the scene to a quieter and secluded place. She was alone, but she knew she and her baby were safe. The fighting continued for another 15-20 minutes and all this while, the mother monkey, with the baby still clinging to her was sitting on a nearby rock far from all of the chaos probably communicating with each other the way my daughter was communicating with her mom.
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