Nothing is more precious to a child than his parents. When he opens his eyes in this world, they are the first persons he sees and recognizes and no matter how much he grows up they remain the most important persons in his life. He is a part of them and vice versa. He feels safe and blooms into a wonderful flower nurtured by their unconditional love. Now, imagine a 7-year old whose dad goes missing forever and nobody knows for the rest of the life what happened to him. This is the story of Aayushi who was born to a medicine shop owner and a homemaker in a backward town of Uttar Pradesh where she lived with her parents, her younger brother and their extended joint family.
All was good in their world until one day she reached home from school with her small brother only to find out that her father had gone missing. The police, the neighbors, the family members kept searching for him for days, weeks, months and later years but to no avail. Hell broke on her naive mom who was then pregnant with her third child. Amidst all this trauma and the jostle to search back her lost man, she lost her third child a few months after her birth. The series of incidents gradually transformed her into hard rock. It was tormenting to keep waiting for decades for a man who you did not know was even alive but to consider him dead until you have seen his body is unimaginable as well. All said and done she had a humongous task of supporting her small kids. She started tailoring clothes and my mom used to give all our clothes for stitching to her as she wouldn’t take any help otherwise. Her youngest brother-in-law supported her kids' education but always on his own terms and conditions. They accepted it all as that way at least they had a roof over their heads.
But all this hurt little Aayu a lot. Initially she missed her dad but later seeing her mom’s condition she started secretly despising him. Why did he leave them and go? Though they say time is the biggest healer, some wounds never heal. Their uncle paid for their higher education but in return asked them to sign off a document which stated that the two kids will never claim their share in the ancestral property. Aayushi didn’t care a pence. All she wanted to stand on her feet at the earliest and give a comfortable life to her mom and brother and she did that at first opportunity. She was so tired of people talking everything absurd about them behind her back.
As soon as her education was over, she left the small town and reached Delhi in search of a job and did land up at one. She worked extremely hard but the job seemed to be not taking her anywhere. We talked once when she was in Delhi, she sounded really depressive, I tried my best to calm her down. She told me that she wants to join the I.T. industry and settle somewhere outside India with her mom and brother to avoid the harsh society who holds her mom culprit for her dad abandoning them. I wanted to tell her not to fled our own country for someone else's fault but did not. She was taking her own decisions for the first time in her life and I won’t stop her.
But she wants to come back once and tell everyone around her that they can’t hold the woman of the house responsible for everything that happens in their life. An Indian woman will be truly empowered only when each Indian no matter in which remotest part of our motherland he resides, stops holding woman a scapegoat for all that goes wrong. Think about it.
This is my ninth post for my 4th consecutive Global #AtoZChallenge and #BlogchatterA2Z. You can read my earlier post in this Women Empowerment Series here: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H
Copyright © 2014-2019 by Roma Gupta Sinha
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If you relate to my writings, you can grab a copy of any of my 3 published books here The Fragrance of True Love, Destiny's Favorite Child and Dare to Defy The Destiny
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