Sir,
There was this young woman on our secretarial staff. Tall, fair and unusually skinny, she lived alone with her two small children. Her husband had died in a road accident barely a couple of years after their marriage, leaving behind little daughters.
She was born and brought up in Delhi. So after her husband died, she could not stay with her in laws who lived in Punjab and came back to her parents. She did not remarry either. Not to become a burden on her parents for long, she took up a job. But she could not stay with her parents for long, and decided once for all to live separately and bring up her children on her own.
Living alone in a metropolis was much more difficult and risky than what she had imagined. Yet, it did not take her long to adapt to the new environment she was thrown into by her destiny, though the transition from a happy-go-lucky housewife to a tired working woman was predicatively most painful and frustrating at times.
Reconciled to her Karma, she accepted the harsh realities of life gracefully as far as she could. She not only ran her household quite well, but by dint of hard work and some help from close friends also managed to acquire a modest flat which she could call her own. Her daughters studied in a good public school and were as bright and disciplined as any child from a normal two parents family could be. I doubt if any other woman in her place would have been able to withstand the trials and tribulations she had undergone after the death of her husband. Her indomitable spirit had triumphed over all those nerve-wrecking odds that her widowhood brought with it.
Yet she did not remain unscathed. The struggle for survive in a highly competitive world of a metropolis along with dual parental role for eight long years had taken their toll in a most ruthless manner. They took away the very essence of her individuality, reducing her literally, to a bundle of bones. There was not much of a woman left in her despite the fact that she was then barely in her early thirties. Shouldering responsibilities that normally belong to the domain of a man had metamorphosed the shy and comely woman that she was not long ago into a lanky and unusually assertive person that had little resemblance with her earlier self.
That was inevitable. After all, everything in this world comes with a price tag. Living alone for this middleclass woman was no exception.
Onkar Singh
on e-mail
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