The lioness in me

There was an old Australian couple in their sixties who chose life in Africa- left their Queensland home for a small house in the wilderness.They had grown tired of making safari trips every summer over the years and their love for animals made them finally make Africa their home.

After 7 years in the region, one day in the forest they found a cub lying next to a dead lioness and got her home.Toby,the husband knew how to tend to motherless cubs and said,‘In 7 months she will be ready for living on her own but needs some care now.’ It sounded good to Kimberley.

So the cub became their own. Seven months stretched to one year.It was soon all of two years since the cub first came to their house and none of them was complaining.

This however came with a price tag. Their friends had long ago stopped coming over. They were not comfortable walking around the house with a fully grown lioness in proximity.But Toby and Kimberley couldn’t ask for more.Their family was complete. They loved Sheeba, the cub,so much!

One day on their returning home they found the kitchen door that opened to the backside of the house and to the forest beyond,open.Toby was the first to realize what might have happened.Sheeba was gone.

Gone without a word. No prelude. No goodbyes.No explanation.Just gone.

Only Kimberley cried.They sat down to think of all the possibilities ofSheeba’sleaving but came up with no satisfactory explanation. Toby was not sad. He accepted Sheeba’s decision to move out.He had nestled and nursed her. He was her dad.

Years passed by. One day there was a huge flood and the couple heard that wildlife was affected in the forest. A flood of such magnitude that it would one day go down in the pages of Africa's history bringing in death and doom in equal proportion.There were corpsesand there werecarcasses.There were fragments of what used to be once people's homes along with vegetation and stench. The catastrophe was accompanied by a rise in the instances of crime in the small settlement.Homeless,displaced people and orphaned children transformed into thieves, burglars of scraps of food and moneyovernight and used the knife to open cans and stab people who resisted them.

Toby and Kimberley entered their house stealthily when they found signs of human presence within it. Few furniture pieces had been noticeably disturbed and there was mud on the carpets. From one room to another they waded carefully, preparing for confrontation with the imposter anytime when the sound of movement came from the kitchen.

Toby motioned to Kimberley to take position behind him as he drew out his shot gun.He had to protect the two of them. With one decisive movement both entered the kitchen and pointed the gun to the imposter.

They found no imposter but three tiny cubs not older than five months in the middle of the chaos in the kitchen, battling over an open milk can which lay on the floor of the kitchen. There were other opened cans and split milk everywhere. Toby and Kimberley had their minds racing and ran to the bedroom upstairs where Sheeba used to sleep before. They found her sleeping quietly near the bed overlooking the window. The lioness they had brought up had come back. Sheeba woke up with the noise and looked at them as if to say,

‘I am home. And I got my kids.’

Sheeba had walked for days to bring her cubs to a place where she was confident they were safe.

Toby and Kimberley rejoiced that day and they spent each and every moment around Sheeba and her cubs looking after them. But this time around they were prepared to have Sheeba leave the day the crisis was over. That day came nine months later and when it did arrive both were prepared to let her go.

This is a story of every lioness- a lioness within each woman who is a mother.She lives within me as well. And we wade through life and its many floods along with our cubs. The option to desert them is not even an option for the lioness. We know which house has a Toby and a Kimberley and which has a backdoor to the kitchen. We take shelter when the floods threaten to consume our cubs. While our cubs are the most wonderful thing that ever happened to us, they are also the very same thing that make us the most vulnerable. We subdue our dignity, our comfort, our hobbies and interests and our choices just so that we can manage a home for them where they are safe and where they are happy.

There are also empowered women worldwide who advocate the right of women to birth control to regain the power over their own vulnerabilities. According to them women if and whengiven the means and the power to control birth of children- whether to have them or not, when to have them, how many to have, with who to have them with, will give them opportunity to control their situation as per their own capacity.

In the transition between the ordinary women to the empowered lives a lioness in me.

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The story was originally published in the leading English daily in Manipur state in India, the Imphal Free Press

http://ifp.co.in/page/items/26820/the-lioness-in-me#