15th January launched ' Anthology of Letters from Mother to Son' book

 BY A STAFF REPORTER: 'Anthology of Letters from Mother to Son' book is being launched at ICCR, Kolkata on Sunday 15th January at 5.30pm. This programme speakers are Shahanshah Mirza, great great grandson of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, Debanjan Chakrabarti, Head of British Council, East and North East, Mousumi Sengupta, journalist, columnist and TV anchor, Carlyta Mouhini, Mumbai based advocate and well known singer. 'Anthology of Letters from Mother to Son' is a potpourri of such tales in form of original letters.

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Edited by well known author, poet, journalist and entrepreneur Saheli Mitra who is founder of content and creative company Tales Talks Walks (TTW) and designed by Bhubaneshwar based artist Rhiti Chatterjee Bose, the book has been published by Virasat Publishers. Contributing mothers are as follows: Anita Bose, Amishi Vora, Baisali Chatterjee Dutt, Ipsita Ganguli, Madhu Jaiswal, Bali Sanghvi, Shalini Gupta, Jayita Ghosal Roy, Sarmita Dey, Amanita Sen, Lily Swarn, Neline Mondal, Bani Chanda, Amrita Mukherjee. 

The main content of this book is How about breaking the shackles of patriarchy in India by bringing up our sons as caring and loving human beings? Can we save our daughters just by shouting about women's rights without educating our sons on how to love back and respect their women? Be it their mother, wives, daughters or any other women. So we believe WE NEED TO SAVE OUR SONS first. 15 incredible mothers from different parts of India have written letters to their sons in this book. In present day India it seems we hv forgotten to celebrate our sons and the general rhetoric is to celebrate only daughters. In the process we are creating a lopsided dialogue on women empowerment and forcing a divide between man and woman that is turning away our sons further from even thinking of getting married, let alone show affection and love to their women.

But only a responsible son raised by a mother properly is able to respect women. Our idea of women empowerment is terribly lopsided where we are marginalising our sons by creating an environment where we make everyone feel that our sons and all men are rapists, molesters etc. But what about creating a balance? We are all humans. Why the divide between a daughter and a son?The incredible mothers of this book are diverse. From a Cancer survivor mother to a mother who writes to her adopted son, to one who writes to her Godsons and another to her doggie who she treats as a son. We have mothers who have lost their sons to death.