​​A Mother's Courage, A Child's Voice (732 words)

An old story for Mother's Day

Saranya invariably brought Anil, her seven-year-old boy, to the park in the evenings. He would play on the slides and swings for some time, and after that, on some days, they would settle down on the bench adjoining the busy road outside the park. She would show him the various passing vehicles and things and name them. Sadly, the boy Anil could not speak since birth, though he could hear well.

 She put him in a normal school, hoping he would blend with other children over time and regain his speech. But Anil, after a few days, refused to go as the other children made fun of him. Her complaints to the teacher were of little avail. As the boy was adamant, her husband felt they should wait for a year and coach him at home in the meantime. They visited all temples and donated to noble causes, hoping for God’s grace.

 As Saranya and Anil watched one day from the bench on the roadside, the buses and trucks whizzing by, a boy of six years came towards Anil and stood by his side. Saranya turned to see if anyone related to the boy was around and found none. She surmised his mother must be begging somewhere in the park. How careless of her, she thought, to leave the young child alone on the pavement of a busy road,

 Anil gave a toffee from his pocket to the boy who had nestled by his side.  Saranya was restless, seeing the boy left alone to fend for himself with his mother nowhere in sight. She repeatedly glanced in vain on all sides to locate her. Saranya wanted to go home, but did not have the heart to leave the little boy just like that.

 As she was thus engrossed in tracing the beggar woman, she heard a piercing scream​, ‘Amma, amma.’ As she turned around in great panic, she saw, to her great shock, the little urchin running towards the middle of the road with a big bus speeding towards the boy a few moments away. Without a second thought and unmindful of the imminent danger, she jumped on the road and pulled the boy in the nick of ​​time before what would have certainly been a ghastly accident and instant death of the urchin.

Only after she brought the boy​ in her arms to the safety of the pavement did she see Anil, all smiles. Her heart skipped a beat when she realised that her son had uttered the word ‘Amma’ for the first time. Filled with tears in boundless joy at the unexpected recovery of his voice, she hugged Anil and smothered him with kisses​.

She firmly believed that merciful God had restored his speech, while the doctors felt that it could be the shock from the very likely accident that Anil saw ​that did the wonder.  

Then she heard it​ again.

​“Amma…”

Saranya froze. For seven long years​, she had waited to hear that one precious word from her son. She had imagined it in her dreams, prayed for it in temples, and wept silently for it through countless lonely nights.

And now, at the very moment she had risked her life to save another child, her own child had found his voice.

“Amma…” Anil repeated, this time more clearly, stretching his tiny hands toward her. Her tears streaming down her face, Saranya gathered him into her arms and held him close, when the broken and halting words slowly followed, each one more beautiful to her than music.

People around them who watched in stunned silence found a beggar woman dragging her son and Ani’s newfound friend away from the crowd. But for Saranya​, the whole world had faded away. There was only her son, calling out to her at last.

Later, the doctors confirmed that the shock and emotion of the near tragedy might have unlocked something deep within Anil’s mind. Saranya, however, believed differently.

To her, it was not science alone. It was the boundless power of a mother’s ​instinctive love and concern​, that too a love for a stranger's child, that propelled her to save the child from an almost certain death, that had finally found its answer in a single word:

“Amma.​, Why are you crying?"​he asked in a clear tone.

And that ​word “Amma' became the most unforgettable Mother’s Day gift she would ever receive.