True Grit

“Oh! It’s a girl! Yet again!”

A small town, a financially challenged house, the elder daughter recently turned 9, the middle one is celebrating 7 years of her ‘existence’, and wola! Here’s born yet another girl! Quite as expected, barring the smiles of the father and the grandmother, this third-newbie-girl is welcomed with frowns. The still-in-pain mother is looked at with helplessly sympathetic, and sadistically pleasurable eyes, especially when her counter candidates had been ejecting out boys in series.

Thanks to the ‘sexually and racially paradoxed’ yet ‘cultured’ society, it’s female stigmatization, it’s effortless efforts towards eradicating some of the social evils converting loud dowries into so-called sophisticated gifts - someone just got an unexpected twist in her motherhood.

Underneath some unsaid silences, and her clogged breath, she lies.. Bewildered

So what next! Advice and opinions galore: “Beautify the daughters, engage in socializing and the associated show-offs, sing in to the tunes of the vanity of socialites, needless to educate the daughters, instead save money and hook them up with the so-called perfect grooms of the town..” For some reason, in India, human species surrounding a person, especially close relatives, consider this their birth right to dictate how a person, having committed blunders like arriving at multiple-female-offsprings, should now succumb to their life-saver wisdom. And if you are a woman, and choose not to do so, you will be simply labeled unsocial and will be out-casted. But I do not blame the social creatures in this case, as they had absolutely no idea of what and whom they were dealing with. For the lady/mother in question had a plan, a sense, a grit of her own, ready to be put to test.

Battling with the storms of the heart, here begins the waterfall..

Post delivery, the mother resumes working as a full time housewife, as a full time mother, and as a full time school teacher, all in parallel. Father continues struggling his ways out at a number of places –Singapore, US, Middle-east. And the concatenated effort is just about sufficient to keep their daughters studying in a decent school, while worrying about what lies next, while thinking if at all there is any way to hit a reverse gear in life and start afresh. Unfortunately or fortunately there is not.

In the middle of all this chaos, the family gets some ‘special’ visits by their ‘so called’ –near and dear one(s), the ‘economically and socially well settled’, and hence ‘wiser’ people, proud about their earned or inherited riches, in the name of brotherhood, shower their lessons of wisdom upon the mother on how to keep herself and her daughters grounded, and not to get over-ambitious. ‘Unrich’ daughters, per them are the shaky, slippery grounds and should never be invested/relied upon.

But strange is this mother, who even after being warned so much, after being suffocated deep into the noise of the city, still manages to remain untouched by it. Needless to mention, the other ‘domestic problems’ which are a part of every marital life, are a part of her life too. 

Stupefied yet stubborn, she continues and challenges messiness head-on..

Days pass by, crises continues. At this stage, an already working mother, mother to 3 kids, the youngest one just delivered, in addition to her full time working job, opens up a boutique at home. Several months pass by, never ending crises still continue. And while catering to all of the above roles, now she decides to add some advanced academic degrees to her belt. This belt already comprises of a Diploma in Arts (one of her art works even got auctioned in an exhibition in Germany), a Bachelors Degree in Science, a Masters in English. She takes up Economics this time, as this promises good money. Money! aah! The need of the hour.  

Somehow she knows what her way is, and the way to her way..

Even in the chilliest of winters, she wakes up at 4AM, unapologetically, and mercilessly. She lights a lamp outside in the balcony so as not to waken up her family. In the silent fog of the uncertainty, she sits, unwary of whether she is going to make it or not, she studies unknown and unheard of concepts. Her grit accompanying her, her love for her daughters fueling her, and her shadow comforting her. Few uninterrupted minutes follow, and she gears up for the rest of the day. She hand-washes clothes, dries them. Cooks and packs food for all. Leaves for her job. Comes back to see some customers waiting at her boutique. Attends to them, attends to the just returned kids. Takes tuition in next few hours, followed by tuition to her own kids. And chores just don’t seem to end.

All this continues for days, months, until the exam-day arrives. And she comes out good. She is an ‘Economics Lecturer’ now! Her brilliance and determination wins over rest all oppressions.

She is her honor, she is her veil.. She is her lamp, she is her wick..

Meanwhile, the daughters are too busy growing up. Yet again, against the opinion of others, they are sent to the best school in a new city altogether. The Mother further aggravates her tuitions and boutique strategies. By now, she is used to seamlessly waking up at 4 in the morning, and to her never ending struggle motivation for ‘larger than life’ experiences in the rest 20 hours of her being awake. As kids have to now catch a public transport to land into their school situated in another city, she first drives the eldest one to the bus-stand, some 6 Km from the house, comes back, drives the middle one to the same place, for she drives a luna and cannot manage a tripling. She comes back, drops herself in her school, yet another 7 Km away in the opposite direction. Years pass by like this.

Her body, her mirror needs some time from her, but she has none to spare..  

The eldest daughter decides to pursue MBA from a reputed college. The mother, without a hitch, stands by her decision, and extends herself into the risk of taking education loan worth lakhs. Decision well made, this daughter is successfully running her own consultancy firm today. The youngest one, being good in vocal and extra-curricular activities, plans to pursue Bachelors in Mass Communication from one of the most expensive universities. The mother, after facing a lot of criticism, stands by her, and yet again manages the fees. This daughter after having graduated effortlessly is now pursuing an MBA.

The middle one decides to go for extra coaching classes to help her with her admissions into good engineering colleges. Mother borrows money from cousins, cousins do help, but with a lot of noise around that ‘girl-child and her education’ crap. None-the-less the daughter gets to sit in the extra classes. The first wave of comfort comes when she gets into a decent engineering college, and also gets scholarship thoroughout. And finally gets the real break of her life, when she gets through her first campus placement and eventually lands into one of the world’s finest organizations. Phew! That journey still continues while I pen this down. Thank you Mom! :)

Who says happiness cannot be earned?! Happiness for me is satisfaction and it was clearly earned, rather snatched from the odds! Whatever I am, whatever I possess –

My body – for I came from her, and her hands nourished it further and turned me into a young lady even before I knew I had entered into adulthood;

 My education, my professional well being – for she taught me, facilitated my education, took the right decisions even before I could sense that blindly following her was doing so much good to me;

 My values – for she never preached but she practiced and demonstrated, and left the rest to me;

My belief system – for she gave me the freedom at the right time to develop one;  
My personal bliss – for she always trusted my decisions, and supported me into marrying the LOVE of my life;

My each compliment I have ever received - I owe it to her, to those wrinkles, to those gray hair.

And that’s why I call her a Bond! My James Bond Mother! It still does not quite sink within me from where she derived her perseverance, her belief in life, no matter how many times, and in which all ugly stunts life hit her.  

But since she excelled, and so we are where we are, and hence is the bliss.

Latest I heard, she is planning to pursue yet another Masters degree, even at this retiring age.

Proud to be born of you mom. In times to come, if I prove myself to be even half as good a mother or a person that you are, I will be a HIT in life, a BIG-time success.

Moral of the story -WYBIWYG (What You Believe Is What You Get) 

P.S – I am equally thankful to my father, but being born a girl, and now turned into a woman (though not yet a mother), I relate more to her...

Thanks to my grandparents (maternal and paternal) for their constant support.