Main Apni Favorite Hun!

"Main apni favourite hun", Geet from Jab We Met was talking on screen. Rati had seen the movie a couple of times, but today she did not have time to sit back and watch the movie, she was in the kitchen, over hearing the dialogues as her husband lazily relaxed on the sofa in front of the TV. The movie was one of Rati's favourite, and she felt a pang in her heart, as the dialogues poured in from the kitchen door. As she was sadly contemplating on how she was missing the movie, the dialogue stirred something within her. Something that hadn't happened the first two times she had watched the movie. As she was wiping the steel thalis, she glanced at her own distorted reflection in the thalos's shiny surface. 'When was the last time you loved yourself?' she heard a strangely familiar voice asking her. After a moment, she recognised that voice, it was her own self talking from within. 

Rati went back into the past, as the question harrassed her. She searched through her memories quickly, but she couldn't find when she had loved herself last. She went further back. As a girl, she had always been asked to and expected to help her mother with the house hold work, while her two younger brothers used to while away all their free time playing with other friends in their back yard. Rati used to look longingly as the children played together, but she couldn't go. She was a 'good' girl, doing chores like washing, cleaning, chopping. The adults in her family said she would become a good wife and daughter-in-law, if she learnt everything from her mother. She used to think, that when she became a good wife, loved by her husband, she would get to live like a queen. 

After she got married, all her friends used to go out on weekends with their husbands, sometimes for movies, sometimes for dinner, but she married in a traditional joint family, and on weekends, she worked double as hard, since the men in the house had a holiday and needed to eat hot, tasty meals. She used to work from dawn till midnight, taking care of everyone's needs in the family, hoping that one day, one of them would acknowledge her presence, but it did not happen. She had learnt to put her needs behind everyone else's right from childhood, and that is what she continued doing in her new home. 

Then Rati became a mother. She thought that at least now she had someone who would love and appreciate her, for her unconditional love, but her children were conditioned to expect their mother to make sacrifices for them, without ever showing any appreciation. And so Rati ended being a door- mat of the family. But, today, when she heard Geet say that line, something stirred deep in her soul. She looked at her distorted reflection, and made a promise to herself. She decided that it was time to show everyone, that she was the beam that kept her home stable and strong. She wasn't the doormat. She decided to put herself first, to take care of herself first, to love herself first. That determination made Rati her own favorite that day!