Am back, and this time after a year……
Whenever I have taken to writing to indite my thoughts and
feelings, I have more often than not, chosen to go by a central theme. But today,
for the first time, I am here to just let out an incoherent flow of emotions.
It’s difficult to explain the reason behind the urge to do so, but I guess, so
far as the ‘I’ in me is concerned, it’s somehow just the need of the hour.
I have read and heard abundantly about one thing – ‘Life is
a lesson, it teaches you a lot’. While sometimes this message would come from
my mother telling me that each experience in life would teach me how to deal
with things better than I did the last time, at others, it would come from just
some random piece of text that I happened to run my eyes through, or from some
candid moments shared with a close confidant. The hardest and possibly the best
way though, is to get the message from your own experience. Although I must
also admit that it definitely isn’t the sweet and encouraging piece of
practical wisdom that you always gain in the process. However, it does make you
a stronger person, one who can face life’s challenges with an undaunted spirit.
But, in my view, more than anything else, it just somehow gives you the
strength to live through a lot of unfair, unexplained, unjust, harsh and
hurtful situations in life, and trust me on this, life does have loads of them
in store for each one of us.
Over the last few days, some of my personal experiences, as
well as what I have heard from people in different contexts, have forced me to
take a rather quizzical look at life. Although,
I am aware of the fact that most of these queries would never have a logical
answer, but that is what bothers me the most. Well, if I come to think of it
more closely, it is more to do with the people involved, when such difficult
situations are created in life, than life in itself, but I still can’t keep
myself from asking this question of ‘Why?’, to which there is obviously no
answer. And it is this unanswered question that makes life an eternal search, and
sometimes just a compromise to fill in the gaps.
Let’s take this for an example – you have made possibly the
only and the most difficult choice in your life. Make it anything that suits
your imagination, the choice of a career, a life partner or any other important
decision that you have taken. Your conviction says it is the right decision,
and so you give it your all. With years of dedication, loyalty, honesty and
trust you work towards making it a success. You nurture your dream and sacrifice
and give up on a lot of other things and patiently wait for your efforts to show
the results that you hope for and in all honesty, deserve as well. But destiny
plays the cruel game, and you see your dreams shattered right in front of your
eyes. The distressing part – you were in
no way responsible for it. It happened because people or situations in life
betrayed you, they took you for granted and disrespected your sacrifices and efforts.
It is then that you see yourself asking – ‘Why?’.
I came across a person a few days back whose ability to hope
for and give life another chance after the innumerable times life had pushed
her back, simply amazed me. She had been wronged by the people she had given her
all to, many a times, but each time she gave those very people yet another
chance to prove her faith and belief in them right. I felt she was demeaning
herself in doing so over and over again. But then I tried to look at things
from her point of view. She had dedicated a decade of her life, given up on a
lot of her dreams, sacrificed a lot, and sincerely given her all to this aspect
of her life. It was her ‘ALL’. So, she probably didn’t want that to turn into
nothing, and so she clung on to the last thread each time and worked towards
making it a strong binding. It is then that I started to see sense in her madness.
But, then I peered at the other side of the picture. Was it
giving the people involved in her life, the freedom to take her for granted, to
believe that she could never walk away? Probably yes. Which is why they kept
doing the same everytime. They would give her a few days of confidence that
this would never happen again, with assurances and pleas of forgiveness. And
then they would expect her to get back to normal, resume her duties and
responsibilities with all honesty and dedication, failing which she would be
questioned, in a manner that said that this is what she was meant to do. It appalled
me..….and this brought me to yet another question – ‘How?’. How could life (or
put it as people if you like it, because life in a lot of ways is made up of
the people involved) be so unfair?
This probably isn’t a very uncommon thing in the life of a
lot of people, especially women, to be more specific the married ones. It is
not that I have a chauvinistic attitude, but even in this age where we proudly proclaim
that we believe in gender equality, there is this strange bias that I have seen
most married women go through. I have seen a few lucky ones too, who have found
a second home post marriage which gives them the same care, love and respect
that all women as daughters get in their parent’s house. Very often we see a
lot being expected out of women…...get married and there you go with a long list
of duties, responsibilities and expectations to be fulfilled. Never mind if the
standards set for the terms of ‘duties,
responsibilities and expectations’ widely vary when it comes to the other half
of the conjugal relationship. Things that are considered unacceptable, almost
criminal when it is for the female in question, happily become synonymous to ‘OK’,
or ‘Mistakes happen’ when it comes to the male. The ones who decide to raise a
voice or walk out are conveniently termed as incompatible or incapable of
handling marital duties. Going by natural senses of logic, we might very well
ask – ‘Why this difference?’. Of course, there is no logical answer and we as
women, have somehow come to terms with this unanswered question of life atleast.
So, on the note that I had started with, although arising
from an array of incoherent thoughts and feelings, I do have a lot of questions
for life…....the unanswered Hows and Whys of Life!!!
