Mother’s milk is the best for the child. This is very essential till the teething is over and the growth is sufficient to masticate and swallow the principal diet. After eight months or one year of the birth of the child, the mother’s milk should be supplemented by cow’s milk. Even after fifteen months of the child’s birth some mothers have got enough milk generated to feed the child fully for an efficient and healthy growth. It is not possible to find a substitute for mother’s milk. In many cases poor India can afford and have only this.
False fashion
Many mothers do not have this milk due to ill-health. Hard luck for the child! Our ancestors knew the greatness of this milk. Whenever a Hindu girl or woman procures water to quench the thirst, it is usual to bless the person with the words “May you generate plenty of milk for your child!” In this matter also false fashion has permeated our society. We polish the rice like the white man and get punished by Nature. Should we even in the matter of this mother’s milk ape the foreigner?
Fatty white kids
Why have not these investigated the fattening growth of the foreign child and the skeletonising process of the ‘dear Seemachu’ of our household? The foreigner may not breast-feed the child. But she procures on account of her opulence and high standard of living through other means all the deficient materials from the ordinary milk-feed of the child. Could we count the bottles of orange juice and tomato juice the child gets per week? All bottled essences are at the disposal of this foreign child.
These practices our fashion-blinded women nicely forget. Even the small savings are not spent for milk or fruits. This money is used for making and ornamenting the match-stick legs and hands of the child with gold and silver menacles. Burdened with this, the puny squealer stops even the occasional movements of his limbs, necessary for his growth. These adorn as the fore-runners of the bondages to come with growth into boyhood and abolesence.
Let us forget for the time being the white women who have invaded here. Thousands of miles away in their own land this farce is not to be seen. The labouring girls there, the village women and even those employed in services, breast feed their children.
Swollen Liver
There are false notions about this matter. The mothers think, that if the children are suckled, youth will vanish, birth rate will increase, and this would go against the latest fashion-trends. This is supplanted by the tinned milk. The benefit of this feed is not for the child. Profit goes to the foreign trader and the pit-digging burning ghat menial. The Doctors come in for a share, as generally the liver gets swollen and diseased.
Don’t deny breast nectar
The first known god is the parents! This is according to the saying of a South Indian Saint Avvai. The mother got the first mention. The mother pours her life and vitality through her milk to the child and earns its undying incomparable gratitude. Through her breasts this divine stream flows symbolising, love, food and duty to the child. Watch the bubbling, rosy, laughing, inimitable face of the child the mother takes in her arms and hugs it to her bosom. The anticipation of the nectarlike feed when is that brings out this innocent divinely joy.
Oh Mothers! even after watching this unique sight, could you get the heart to cheat the child with the tinned milk? When you come and sit with the feeding bottle, look at the face of the child. The face downcast, bloom gone out, and sullen, reproachfully turns towards the misguided, deluded mother. See this sight! How then could your heart remain stony and not melt to yield the breast to the quivering lips of the child? The child perplexed does not understand. It thinks “why should my mother dear hide away my birthright, breast nectar from me?” Abandoning the highest ideals, to stick to life-less externals will never give happiness.
A total essence
The mother’s milk gives a harmonious combination of all the ingredients essential to the growth and health of the child. There is nothing to equal this. The child fed like this acquires a healthy adolescence. Psychologically the child shows instinctive gratitude in a greater measure. These children display more harmony, responsibility and self-sacrifice later on.
No deterioration of beauty
Suckling the baby need not necessarily destroy the freshness or the youth of the mother. If the mother feeds herself well and properly, youth and health will be there in abundance. Nature is there to do the needful. Many men regard their wives as slaves. Their strength and pride are vaunted before them only! This misspent energy can be utilised by these beings in service to the country or society and procuring the most essential articles of diet to their wives.
One may utilise powders by the dozen: rub lipsticks till the skin peels off and adorn, in infinite variety of costumes! With what results? This painted beauty would show out hideously haggard before the divinely radiant motherhood which gives its life and energy in undying streams to its children!
Are we inferior to animals?
The goat does not search for the ‘milkmaid tin’ when its child comes forth! Nor does it call out the cow and say “You suckle my child, my youth will fade away and the He goat will get angry!” The cow, the elephant and even the tiger does not search for a proxy to feed its progeny. We boast ourselves to be superior to the animal in all respects. The human being is endowed with intelligence and common sense, Viveka. Why then should the human being abandon its natural duty?
One need not fret as to the connection between cow’s milk and the human milk. The youth, the old and the aged are not the only occupants of this Earth in the human category. The child also is a limb of this humanity the basic limb! The diet of the child also needs attention here. This is the citizen of tomorrow, the Pioneer of the future, the conquering hero to come! The infant mortality is the highest in India among all civilised nations. When the health of the child is increased, the average age of the Indian will leap up. To forget the child’s diet is to build a castle in the air, without foundation on earth!