Self-reliant yet dependent?

 

Where’s my identity?

I was bored, so I decided to write something.  The problem is that I am not a good writer. My husband is,  but he doesn’t write these days, he says he needs to be in a ‘Zone’ to write.

 

I am not so sure I know what a ‘Zone’ is. Nevertheless, I decided to write.

 

 I have been hearing a lot about ‘empowering of women’ in the Indian media these days thanks to Rahul Gandhi (for those who don’t know him, please look him up on Google, there is a lot of info on his pedigree and his leadership). Politics is not my area of interest (that makes me wonder what my area of interest is but I’ll leave that for later), I am not going to write about it – what I am going to write about is a story.  A story of a hard working woman.

 

 

Mary is in her forties, she has two children, a boy in the cusp of adulthood who doesn’t want to complete his studies and prefers doing odd jobs instead, a girl studying in secondary school who wants to be a nun. Her husband was partially paralyzed a few years ago leaving Mary to be the sole breadwinner of the family. During the years that he was active, it wasn’t that he was of any use to his family, he ended up spending all his money drinking or on his ‘other’ woman. It was quite common for him to hurl abuses at Mary and ill-treat her.  Mary struggled to make ends meet for her children.  She did lots of jobs and started tailoring to support the family.  It was then someone suggested that she take up a job abroad so that she could make more money to support her family.  She thought it was a good idea, she moved to live with a family to take care of their children, she did this for two years. Fate bought Mary to me, I was looking for someone to help me take care of my baby and she was looking for work too and she moved in with us.

 

One day she looked very disturbed (she usually does when her folks call her up). I asked her what the matter was and she told me that her husband was ill. When I asked her what had happened, she said that he was probably drunk and had a fall. I asked her if her son took him to the hospital. She said that he did. She was worried. And what she went on to say took me by surprise.  She said, ‘ I need him, if he dies I will be a lone woman in this world and nobody will respect me’.  I tried hard to understand these words, here was a lady who had striven hard to support her children and give them a decent living, struggled to support a drunkard  and partially paralyzed husband.  I failed to understand why no one would not respect her if her husband was no more. If anything they must respect her for all the hardships she has gone through. What does respect have to do with being married?

 

Then I realized the reality that we live in. All men are not like Mary’s husband and not all women are like Mary but I have to say that society, to a large extent, is still patriarchal and chauvinistic.  In most families these days, men have started to appreciate the role that women play and are happy to get their hands dirty in household chores too. But there is the other side of society where the story is entirely different; no matter what men do or not do, women will still depend on them and count on them as someone who can give them an identity in the society. No matter how much we empower women, unless there is a change in mind-set (society, in its totality), nothing can be done about it.

 

 

So that is the end of the story really. Can I change Mary’s way of thinking? I can try, I am not entirely convinced I will be successful. Her beliefs are deep rooted. But  there something else we all can do. When we raise our children, no matter what gender they are we must teach them to respect themselves as individuals.  We must also make sure that we nurture them and give them strong values to grow up as good human beings so that they can appreciate others too.

 

I am wondering if I can write more, but this is where my thoughts have ended.  Possibly this is what it means to be in a ‘Zone’. That’s another learning for the day!

– Divya Varadarajan