Life has many attachments,responsibilities towards our relations , our society .My life in particular was burdened by a very different stigma..to be a girl child of a widowed mother.19th August,1995 the day when my father went away without even saying goodbye...took with him my childhood, my innocence.
I was lucky to be bestowed by a mother of strong will and someone who had the zest for life.Being the elder daughter i realized that I had to be strong and I learnt the art not to reveal my thoughts, my pain, my grief as a whole.
Destiny took the bread earner of our family.However things weren't that bad .We shifted to our paternal home and my mother started playing the multifaceted role of being the daughter in law, the mother and the father of her two little daughters.
The latter part was quite an ordeal because when bringing up two daughters as a single mother you always have to guard them.
If you were to notice the periphery of my life as a whole, you would say i had everything: a lavish bungalow, servants,drivers, best of education, clothing;if not in excess then definitely not deprived.
But deep inside,the core of my life,the story is not so rosy as it seems.How the loss of one male member changes life completely.When a woman becomes independent and starts taking life in the best of spirits ,the guards of society try their level best to tarnish her impeccable image .When you are deprived ,all the help that comes, does not mean it has come without intentions ..The fragility of a woman is so immense that only she knows how to project her tensile strength.
I have seen my mother bearing the brunt of societal pressures , meandering through different roles all alone, but in return all that she would hear is complaints.
I have heard those words and I still refrained from speaking. Many times people related have spoken and have spoken anything they wanted and I kept a blank face.It is said that silence is golden but my silence did not feel noble. I was ashamed of my cowardice.As the norms of society are that good girls don't retaliate ,I confined myself in keeping mum and showing self control.
I have done my brooding and the guilt of not doing enough rises in me like bile so that i might lose the appetite of life.The inhibitions of being a daughter compel me to think that my purpose may not be achieved.Today, I recreated from my pen and relived my sorrows not for some self pity or to taint anyone black. I know that I have become sensitive not through my sensibility but because of my experience.
No other person can understand someones grief unless one has experienced it.I have done this to set myself free of a great emotional baggage..to come out of the claws of my haunting past.
I am a stronger person now,whose decisions would not stand testimony to conservative thinking .I am out of the greyness of that reality where girls have to sacrifice their ambitions , their ideologies to show that they adhere to the principles of society . I am setting free , so that i do not deprive myself of enjoying my existence;Graduating from the school of values and striking the balance to control the rudder of my lifeboat.
