A Mother’S Heart

Floods took their toll in a remote village of Punjab in India. At one time, the fury of the angry river unable to contain itself, swept away some mud houses and their dwellers along with it. Three-year-old Bharat, who had gone to play at his cousin’s house was also swept away. Bharat’s twin brother Kewat and their parents cried and lamented his death.

When Kewat was nineteen years old, he along with his parents was going to the neighbouring village in their tractor. On the highway, a group of four men from Bihar requested them for a lift to the nearest bus station. Kewat was driving while his parents were sitting in the trolley at the back. They struck a conversation with the Bihari hitchhikers. The youngsters explained that due to the harvest season in Punjab; farm hands got paid well, so they had come in search of work. Some intuitive force drew the mother to one of these youngsters called Bablu. She insisted on taking them all to her house for a meal. There, she called the Panchayat (Village elders) and said, “I am sure that this boy Bablu, is my son who was washed away by the floods sixteen years ago. I have no proof. My son had a birthmark on his inner right thigh. Please examine him and help me to find out.”

Everyone including the youth was bewildered. On physical examination, the birthmark was found just where she remembered it. The boy insisted that his parents were in Bihar. Having contacted them, they confirmed that sixteen years ago this boy had been found by them on the bank of a river in Punjab, he had obviously been washed ashore by the floods. Not knowing what to do, they had taken him home to Bihar and brought him up. The rest was history.

The actual father of Bablu, after a tearful but joyous reunion with his son, asked his wife, “How did you know, that he was our child?” She gazed lovingly at her twin sons sitting together after so many years and said, “I kept him in my womb for nine months. He is a part of my flesh and blood. But how would you know? You have to have a mother’s heart to understand!”