Me and my friend have this ritual every new year. We welcome the new year by
analyzing the year that passed. This year has been a very happening year in my
life. It has quite turned my life in many ways. Sadly, I wont be sharing this
ritual with my friend this year.
I welcomed the new year with hopes and happiness but my happiness was rather short lived. My new year started with a summons to the court where my husband had filed for the dissolution of our marriage. For having put up with his abuse and abandonment I thought I at least deserved an explanation. I wondered why it even bothered me that he had abandoned me, when it was in many ways a blessing in disguise. I have never felt as helpless and hopeless as I have felt in this entire year. There are so many things that I have come to hate in this one year and a few things where my pride has dissolved. I used to pride myself on being a girl; I really cannot understand where this came from because now I know how much of a disadvantage I have been in for being a girl. Although its my H who deserted me, I have become the one who's become answerable to all and sundry. From the laundry man to the lawyer, from the neighbor next door to relatives across the globe everyone's curious on what I did wrong. Oh come on, she's the wife so she must be wrong. A woman can win it all but her H abandoned her. She surely did not have enough in her to win. This must be the only time a woman or her prowess is glorified beyond what is actually true. And no, these are not those dumb, gossip loving people. They are these educated, broad minded people of today who want to find solutions!!! Solutions my foot!!! If it was all so simple. All the pretense in the world cannot hide this sadistic hunger. And here I was proudly proclaiming that I was proud to be a girl. Maybe I hadn’t seen the world. I was also a diehard patriotic, I wondered why people left our country and never wanted to come back. I think I had only begun to understand the reasons with the Nirbhaya tragedy. This is a country full of hypocrites with utter disrespect for women. I should know cos I have experienced it myself. My husband and in-laws were abusive to me and how easy it was for them to get away with all of it. For all the hype and hooplah about Indian laws favoring women, they must not have lost a second's sleep. All you need is some bribe and you can get away with just about anything here. Want to inflict maximum damage on a woman? Oh! the Indian legal system is all you need. Just keep the cases dragging for years. They do not mind wasting lakhs and lakhs of rupees on lawyer’s fees and court fees but they just cannot settle things and get done with. To hell with your money. Why would anyone want to even come back to this country where women are nothing more than toys, where she has to fight for even the right to simply live and breathe, leave alone live in peace. And here we are, proud of having a mars mission when a sizeable portion of half its population live in fear and die a million deaths everyday at the hands of its culture, legal system, police forces and society. Shame on us really!! They say we worship women in form of goddesses. I think we only worship greed - greed for money and strength which are granted by goddesses. If it wasn’t Lakshmi who granted wealth, I wonder if she would even exist for our society. We blog, we argue, we discuss yet nothing changes. People raise noises about women empowerment, yet do not bat an eyelid while ill treating their maid or defining a woman by her relationships. Definitely, we do not practice what we preach. Anyways having experienced this bad world first hand, I have definitely learnt a whole lot of valuable lessons.
Well an year is quite a long stretch of time and it cant be all bad, can it be? There have been some happy experiences that I have had too. I have found a friend - halfway across the globe and in a manner I least expected. Someone who understands my issues just as well as I do and constantly keeps me positive. My best friend got married to her long time boyfriend and moved continents to happily settle in with her new husband. Its time for me to take a backseat in her life and so will my new year ritual. I have been writing this blog and have read some exceptionally positive ones that have kept me sane. In this adversity I have found some new friends - people with similar problems who are willing to help even though they do not know you. More than anything I have discovered my resilience - I may have been through hell but I have survived - with a lot of help from expected and unexpected quarters. I was a mess when the year started, I can still remember how much I had cried in fear of having to face the barrage of lies that my H was throwing at me in the court, yet today I have grown into this person who can say I have to deal with this, so deal I will. And I have done this while keeping my routine intact. Yes there are days of unprecedented gloom but I have hung on. Hope is something that I am still working on installing into myself but that's something that Ill hopefully achieve this year ;-) After all the world is beckoning towards a new start.
Happy new year!!!
I welcomed the new year with hopes and happiness but my happiness was rather short lived. My new year started with a summons to the court where my husband had filed for the dissolution of our marriage. For having put up with his abuse and abandonment I thought I at least deserved an explanation. I wondered why it even bothered me that he had abandoned me, when it was in many ways a blessing in disguise. I have never felt as helpless and hopeless as I have felt in this entire year. There are so many things that I have come to hate in this one year and a few things where my pride has dissolved. I used to pride myself on being a girl; I really cannot understand where this came from because now I know how much of a disadvantage I have been in for being a girl. Although its my H who deserted me, I have become the one who's become answerable to all and sundry. From the laundry man to the lawyer, from the neighbor next door to relatives across the globe everyone's curious on what I did wrong. Oh come on, she's the wife so she must be wrong. A woman can win it all but her H abandoned her. She surely did not have enough in her to win. This must be the only time a woman or her prowess is glorified beyond what is actually true. And no, these are not those dumb, gossip loving people. They are these educated, broad minded people of today who want to find solutions!!! Solutions my foot!!! If it was all so simple. All the pretense in the world cannot hide this sadistic hunger. And here I was proudly proclaiming that I was proud to be a girl. Maybe I hadn’t seen the world. I was also a diehard patriotic, I wondered why people left our country and never wanted to come back. I think I had only begun to understand the reasons with the Nirbhaya tragedy. This is a country full of hypocrites with utter disrespect for women. I should know cos I have experienced it myself. My husband and in-laws were abusive to me and how easy it was for them to get away with all of it. For all the hype and hooplah about Indian laws favoring women, they must not have lost a second's sleep. All you need is some bribe and you can get away with just about anything here. Want to inflict maximum damage on a woman? Oh! the Indian legal system is all you need. Just keep the cases dragging for years. They do not mind wasting lakhs and lakhs of rupees on lawyer’s fees and court fees but they just cannot settle things and get done with. To hell with your money. Why would anyone want to even come back to this country where women are nothing more than toys, where she has to fight for even the right to simply live and breathe, leave alone live in peace. And here we are, proud of having a mars mission when a sizeable portion of half its population live in fear and die a million deaths everyday at the hands of its culture, legal system, police forces and society. Shame on us really!! They say we worship women in form of goddesses. I think we only worship greed - greed for money and strength which are granted by goddesses. If it wasn’t Lakshmi who granted wealth, I wonder if she would even exist for our society. We blog, we argue, we discuss yet nothing changes. People raise noises about women empowerment, yet do not bat an eyelid while ill treating their maid or defining a woman by her relationships. Definitely, we do not practice what we preach. Anyways having experienced this bad world first hand, I have definitely learnt a whole lot of valuable lessons.
Well an year is quite a long stretch of time and it cant be all bad, can it be? There have been some happy experiences that I have had too. I have found a friend - halfway across the globe and in a manner I least expected. Someone who understands my issues just as well as I do and constantly keeps me positive. My best friend got married to her long time boyfriend and moved continents to happily settle in with her new husband. Its time for me to take a backseat in her life and so will my new year ritual. I have been writing this blog and have read some exceptionally positive ones that have kept me sane. In this adversity I have found some new friends - people with similar problems who are willing to help even though they do not know you. More than anything I have discovered my resilience - I may have been through hell but I have survived - with a lot of help from expected and unexpected quarters. I was a mess when the year started, I can still remember how much I had cried in fear of having to face the barrage of lies that my H was throwing at me in the court, yet today I have grown into this person who can say I have to deal with this, so deal I will. And I have done this while keeping my routine intact. Yes there are days of unprecedented gloom but I have hung on. Hope is something that I am still working on installing into myself but that's something that Ill hopefully achieve this year ;-) After all the world is beckoning towards a new start.
Happy new year!!!
