IT’S a strange, sad sight I am seeing as my car overtakes an auto rickshaw: A young couple holding a little baby. I look a little closer, puzzled to see it is the father holding the baby and the mother, an arm tightly around her husband’s shoulder. I don’t want to look farther because I know there’s something tragic here, but the journalist in me gives in and with tears in my eyes I look at the baby in his arms; there’s a cloth covering the face and I know it’s dead!
Again and again my car and the rickshaw draw abreast: I see the father sobbing uncontrollably. I see his wife her arm resolutely round his shoulder, comforting him, giving him strength to go through this terrible hour of grief and agony!
Not for a moment do I doubt the terrible pain she must be going through, nor do I doubt that even as her arm and heart reaches out to her weeping husband that she also must be dying inside.
I watch as she looks down at the little child, I see her choke but there are no visible tears. She will cry tomorrow and the days and nights thereafter and maybe forever thinking of the child who left her, a baby she lovingly suckled and birthed! A baby she must have hoped and dreamt for and who now lies lifeless in her husband’s arms!
But for now there are no tears, there’s only the giving of strength to her man! The strength of a woman! Solid! Strong! Sustaining! The rickshaw draws up again, I look at the arm around her husband, giving him strength, urging him not to break down, telling him silently he is not alone!
I leave the couple and think of all the people who try to put women down: men who put fetters on them, imprison them in their houses, cage them in bedrooms and kitchens. What fools we are: the days of the hunter are over, our flexed muscles are useless and not needed anymore and suddenly it is inner strength that matter, and an inner strength that a woman is blessed with in abundance!
The auto speeds away, but I smile through my tears: the baby may be dead, but the woman lives on and with her strength she’ll pull her family through! The strength of a woman, mighty and God given..!
