I met Y for lunch today. We got talking about things, like hair colour, when my maid entered into the conversation. And i told Y about how she was bringing up three children all on her own. She left her husband years ago because he was an alcoholic, beat her and gave her a lot of grief. Before the words quite escaped from my lips, Y said, "It's so funny that we are educated people, yet when it comes to marriage and domestic issues, we prefer to stay in it and sort it out."
It's true. I know of a couple - R and F - who've had problems ever since they tied the knot, but have stuck on for donkey's years despite domestic violence and what-not. And these are the same people who persuaded my previous maid to leave her husband when she came home at 1 in the morning with a bandaged head. She left him, and to this day the other couple do nothing more than applaud my maid's courage. Likewise my present maid too. They were proud of her for having taken the brave step of leaving hubby behind. Makes me wonder, who's really empowered?
Does all of this mean that educated people are cowards when it comes to opting out of dissatisfactory marriages? Does it mean that they've got much more to lose than my maid or somebody else who isn't so well-to-do? What stops them anyway, the fact that they have social circles who wag tongues freely to deliver whiplashes of hurt and misery? Or are they duty-bound to their families, the people who attended their glorious weddings and the people they are married to? For that matter, what made my maids leave their husbands? It couldn't have been easy for them, not with their social backgrounds where morality is held in highest regard and leading a 'pure' life is so much more important. (This, by the way, is fodder for another post. I believe that when people have nothing else to hold on to, they clutch on to their morality. It's subjective... and not open to debate.) Yet these women did it. And they survived. And today, they're happy. Happy. Did they do it because, like Y says, they had nothing more to lose? They had seen the worst in life, and there was nothing else that could happen?
Frankly, i don't know. Which is why it scares me plenty to think that if i get married, i will be joining millions of the educated class on the bandwagon. And predictably, i know where that will land me too.
2 comments:
Hey,
Just read...was pleasantly surprised to see lunch with "Y" featuring. Felt like some celebrity showered with the blessing of anonymity, if only to escape from the shrewd eyes of the paparazzi. :)
I have a maid story to add to your list, this time, it's my son's nanny's.
After listening to all that she has done in her life... Bringing up 4 kids on her own. Trying to reform her drunkard husband (who used to beat her to pulp and cut up her sarees so she can't go out well dressed. And reform him more with police intervention (who ordered him to report to the station every evening with a share of his daily earnings to be passed on to his wife... which he did for precisely 3 days)...
And later choosing to separate on her own insistence (again with police support) when she realised it wasn't going anywhere (just more bruises on herself and scars in her mind)...
But much to his chagrin (which he displayed with violent drunken stupors and protests outside her residence and name-calling and threats for months on end) and how she stuck to her guns, and started working for the first time in her life after having led a protected life in a convent all her childhood....
How she ran a restaurant all on her own with 4 kids to look after, waking up at 3am and preparing an insane variety of breakfast delicacies in bulk, and going to bed only after 12pm after washing piles of hefty utensils, with little help from anyone else.
Later how she went to sell stuff on the streets; and readied patients going in for an operation (shave their legs, plait their hair etc.) in a hospital for daily wages; how she took those who teased her college going son at the bus stop on the basis of a religious bias to task, how she found their houses that very night all on her own after putting her kids to sleep and warned the miscreants' parents to keep them from repeating their act. And later when they did, how she dragged her son to the poilice station and filed a complaint, and how she eventually won some peace of mind...
How she moved out of her only house with her three other kids and sold it to pay off her daughter's dowry, and how later she handled her daughter's marriage problems with a harrowing mother-in-law and wimpish son-in-law...
How she still provides to half her family who are married and supposedly 'settled' in life... and yet, through this all, how she still smiles, keeps her wits about her and sings songs for my little son and eagerly awaits every Mammooty movie that is released...
It's amazing what a woman is capable of doing, on her own, if only she chose to!!!
That's the killer thing you know, choosing to do it. I'm glad she found the strength to do what she did. And to be able to still keep smiling. Her spirit is unbreakable. Give her a hug and a salute from me sometime. :)
Post a Comment