Poignant Story of Mother-Less ‘Irtiqa’ Who Couldn’t Celebrate This Mother’s Day
For some children, this day is only a painful reminder of the mother they lost.
Shoaib Gani
With schools celebrating ‘Mothers Day’ to express respect, honour and love towards mother’s, hundreds of orphan children enrolled in those schools are left clueless and in most of the cases their pain is ignored by celebrating the day without taking into consideration the trauma they must be going through while holding a placard in their hands with “my mother is my world” written on it.
All of sudden, 7-year-old Irtiqa (name changed) was informed by her family members about an unannounced holiday in her school and she was given to understand that the school was closed because of incessant rains and that they have received a message from the school authorities about the closure of the school. Actually, the school had planned a celebration for its children to honour their mother’s on this year’s mother’s day.
It was only when Irtiqa spotted her school bus outside her home when she started questioning her family members about the authenticity of the message. Surprised and shocked, Irtiqa in a higher tone started blaming her father for being negligent and irresponsible, as she never wanted to miss her classes, not even for a single day. But, her family members have learnt to react promptly to such situations and in this case they decided to mark mother’s day as a holiday for Irtiqa.
Irtiqa lost her mother to a life threatening disease just a few months back and she is well aware of the fact that she is an orphan – a motherless child, but at the same time she is too young to comprehend the flawed policy and agenda of schools which never takes care of sensitive issues like that of Irtiqas’.
When our news gatherer tried to talk about the seriousness of this issue with the principal of a school, the question left the principal clueless and he, in broken words said that the orphans in our school do receive the benefits they deserve. One wonder’s, how are ‘benefits’ supposed to serve the purpose pertaining to the issue in question.
Irtiqa, usually doesn’t talk much, but on this very particular day, she grew curious, she is scared and probably she is trying to correlate this confusing scenario to the day when she lost her mother and she was told that her mother has been taken to the hospital where she has been admitted and it is going to take a very long time before she comes back. She is scared of lies.
In the back of her mind, Irtiqa knows that her mother is not alive, as she never asks about her wellbeing and whenever she is supposed to read the word ‘mother‘ from her books, she lowers her tone as if she doesn’t want to listen to this word anymore.
The issue is grave and schools should come up with a policy before celebrating mother’s day and involving such orphan kids in the celebration, as most of the schools make placards, paintings and in some cases they send gifts which the kids are supposed to hand over to their mother’s at home. Such a task may be traumatizing for an orphan who back home doesn’t have a mother to handover the gift to.
For some children, this day is only a painful reminder of the mother they lost.
