Another Education

I am not a Science Grad. All my life, till some days ago, I had not been interested in the science behind anything. Things work the way can or should work as experts explain, was all for me. After my life's struggle of understanding what academics is, I finally graduated and enrolled in a Government Masters Course. Still, then I did not need to use the understanding of the science behind anything. We had little concept of understanding lessons for education practically. Minimal understanding and a fat amount of rote memory went on fine with a good if not best students. For students of average calibre, like me, the combination was minimal understanding and use of minimal rote memory for students of any branch of Social Behavioural Studies.

 Then, as if accidentally, I happened to observe that some of our classmates had suddenly acquired brains, which at least their Academic records prior to this did not suggest they had, at least not above the line of a struggling average mark. I found out, after much investigation, their daddiy's have been investing the an-Indian-middle-class unthinkable amount of money almost 2000INR or something near to it from their early or later Boards years of schooling, almost around twenty years ago from now(2022 Current Year). This gave them the virtue of appearing and performing well within a standard level on various kinds of package programs for private academic training, for 3 to 6 years. Obviously, my daddy will not do it, keeping up the image of 'the champion of middle-class, though it was quite clear that like other Middleclass Indians we have to keep up with restricted life expenditures. So I had to opt for good to best private tutors paying a few hundred rupees each of three to four private tutors I availed. Mostly I forgot all my rote memory acquirements from the well-read and explained chapters with no 'packaged study materials' for the explanation while travelling to reach and return from each of the tutorials all in different directions, that took me more than one to one and half hours for each one of them.

 However my father, maybe it hurt his fatherly ego, seeing me becoming educated to be able to back my life decisions, decided he would pay some amount of his earnings for my higher education pursuit, like a degree in Masters of Business Administration, for seven to nine months as I estimate it after seventeen years. I fared badly in its Common Ability Test. However, there were other options for average pupils like us. I got through somehow Okay through my management Aptitude Test and Graduate Management Admission Test. However, higher education through the latter was expensive if opting for a standard good Management School. So I somehow pushed myself in through a somewhat then standard Management School, with my Masters in a certain stream of Academics and my fairly performed Secondary and Higher Secondary Education in a long time reputed School to recommend me.

 Thus was my education counselling, even from the parental side, quite obsolete even for fifteen to twenty years from now. I knew with all the pervasive anxiety brewing in me, I could do nothing more but accept with all the bitterness inside me, the manhandling of my education, emotional training before that and career after that.

 Yes, the emotional training part was important as every child should have a healthy one. It should ideally include, as everybody would agree, more of acceptance, less of 'no', never hushing up or rebuking a child but encouraging a child to be soberly audible about physical touch, the importance of properly dressing without wrapping up too much as our body is not a matter of shame rather need a correct size and fit of garments generally other children of that age group or, even if I am orthodox would say, gender wearing. My parents had a lot of differences on this wing of education which healthy parenthood should not include.

Later on, when after all the turmoil of my education life was on the brink of leaving my life stage, entered my career life. I had received a job as a health insurer from the placement program of the Management School.

To add to it was my intention of a more grounded job as in Bank or Government Sector. Another thing that happened was a group of entities started surrounding me from the last month of my service while I boarded a conveyance homeward from my office. A bunch of needy if not shabby peons of nature, not exactly birds, for my father would call them to be helpful with body straining jobs, would surround me more than half the length of my way home. Some slyly smiling at a glance on their face. Some muttering about an unbecoming incident very similar to that happened some hours before with me or even at home the day before. All this and even more was the increasing physical problem that was later detected as multiple cysts in the uterus. 

 I was left without a job although self-training and appearing for a number of Bank and Government job recruitment exams.

It seemed like an ocean of never-reaching satisfactory end. I was interested in marriage, arranged one of course. However, my parents could not find a suitor owing to the fact I was pursuing a job and who would marry such a girl or a woman. Now, as I was a sit at home daughter they very quickly found a suitor and as such I had to move out of my hometown to somewhere, where if I had to continue with a job to bide my idle time needed guardian, needed to know the city conveyance system, most importantly I had no one to communicate to for I was threatened even submitting my Curriculum Vitae would lead to my marriage and husband's intentional termination of his job like his elder brother, who though never married, gave up a job in the name of higher education only to use it for eternal rest on his bed. 

 I was far from accepting the fact marriage would get me back to my hometown only to live at my in-law's place, with my mother-in-law, father-in-law, and a clinically demented brother-in-law doing odd errands trapped in an apartment only to visit the terrace and sometimes, which hardly happened, following my mother-in-law like a mule. Even wearing a simple 'salwar kameez' would earn me the name of characterless from my in-laws, were never used to talk a single word to anyone other than these three people. Well knew may be wondering I am supposing these things may have happened to me when I made myself clear I would not do it. The truth is this was my life continuously for a month while my husband enjoyed a good professional and social life with 'friends' in some other city. After this, I vehemently protested for my return to my father's abode and subsequently to my marital residence at my husband's place, to which my in-laws, my father's relatives and my husband agreed that I was mentally ill. What happened after this is painful and unimaginable and I will not talk about it. 

  I proved myself quite fit six months after which I joined as a teacher in a school. I worked there till I was pregnant with my only child. I had to leave this as there was no support and I was already two months pregnant and was taken quite weak, medical reports of which was hidden after the birth of my child for a long time to prove I left my teaching job on impulse.

 After the birth of my child, another story of my capable motherhood was expressed by my in-laws. My in-laws stayed with me now. However even after breastfeeding stitching cleaning feeding nursing my child, when told an incapable mother I could not accept it. I took some minor legal help to get my space back at my husband's place. This left me helpless, with no trust from my husband who never accepted the fact I was beaten up too in his absence for which in the very first opportunity I had, with others leaving the house on an errand, I did not open the doors.

  When things were getting normal I wanted to join a job again. Interviews went on well but the hours of the job did not let my child be even underpaid care. So I started attending sewing classes for 2 hours when my child was in a playschool. 

 My opting sewing classes irritated my husband. He contacted my relatives apart from my parents and in-laws, who tutored him to teach me a lesson by distancing him from the child. With cooking, nursing my child and sewing lessons my interactions with the child too became scarce. As such my child developed speech irregularity and related problems which frustrated us especially me. I became hard on the child and in turn, my child became restless. All the therapy along with medication helped to subside the restlessness in the child and make him verbal. However, they couldn't subside his latent anxiety of seeing a mother's anxious and frustrated face of those restless days. I understood I couldn't leave my child for a moment, nor have any ambition of mine or else my child may pay for my ambitions.

 This is to all Women, Please understand dignity is not only a tangible object that can be only physically touched. Dignity has an intangible part very sacred to all us Women as well as all human beings.