The Women Of Richa’s World

The world is a fantastic place which may sometimes appear weird. God through His own divine mechanism has engineered every object, every situation, every system backed by His unique sense of backups. In addition to that human kind has developed further backups at every stage of their survival may how much reluctant they be about taking care of the part of Nature allotted to them.

  God’s greatest backup is the ‘being’ he created as ‘Woman’. Each of this being have been assigned innumerous responsibilities, the two basic being, taking care of themselves and the chief among them is ‘to take care about themselves’. To take care about themselves, each of them very arduously follow a set of uncountable duties relating to each individual in her family, her environment be it social or professional, with full confidence even in stringent situations, on God’s backup mechanism.

Richa was a happy go lucky woman, at least her person gave people around her that notion about her. Her mother and her maternal uncle, her mother’s twin brother had been the only two children of their parents. Her mother’s parents were people of extinct nature as parents. Many would say, these parents were people, who from their inception of parenthood thought their children would endure everything even without their support and survive against every odd. So they did.

 Richa’s mother, Pramila aunty, saw many ups and downs in her life. Whatever people understand as their Constitutional birthright she had to let go of them one by one and for the leftovers she had cling to it to save to take the sole responsibility, so that her offsprings were not called rootless descendants. Whatever Richa saw from the very many situations arising from her parent-in-law’s home, the same could be said about her mother-in-law, Taruna aunty.

 Saving every bits and pieces, yet trying to prove the worthiness of their existence in this wide world as daughter, sister, wife, mother and above all, both of them individually as a woman. Yet, they never forgot to ridicule each other as sisters-in-laws. As daughters, both being worthy daughters, had lost their respective fathers at very young age and later brought up in their maternal homes. Each of them, being the only daughter of their respective parents, the change in care from the parentship of both parents to a single parent was heavily felt by both of them. Their mothers were educated in the contemporary sense of education, but still the widowed women felt helpless.

 The families missed the sheltered feeling and seemed to be singled out at every trial of life. However, may what come they managed to overcome the feeling of nothingness and stand up fairing quite well against the odds of life.

It is in human nature, if we have observed well, to let those weakened by the wrath of Nature remain weak. People, as if cannot believe they can fare well at any phase of life anymore. One may regard this kind of behaviour as jealousy, but in reality, its human nature of reluctance to accept positive change in others and the fear of others surpassing them in the better run of life. They would naturally try to gather people around them whose reluctance in accepting the better in others is not only a shabby condition for them but very amusingly they cannot even believe in their own achievements and subsequently their rise.

People were thus very supportive as claimed by both Pramila Aunty and Taruna Aunty, except they themselves for each other being Richa’s husband Amar’s and Richa’s own mothers-in-law respectively. Both the mothers-in-law never missed a chance of finding faults about Amar and Richa.

 Amar was never matured enough to handle family responsibilities yet, claimed Pramila Aunty. Taruna Aunty had a view that Richa needed to be more homely, may be forever. Some may say it is the in-laws’ way of controlling their son-in-law and daughter-in-law. People who have the habit of seeing life more nearly, would say they are overbearing as parents and cannot believe the younger generations as capable of taking natural responsibilities. The mixed feelings of previous experiences in life and the fear of loosing out control over life made their lives more claustrophobic, limiting their existence within walls of their nine hundred fifty square feet apartments. They mostly prefer to be boiled in their respective kitchens, not sparing a single chance to the food deliverers by being their own notion-born cheated and watch hours of non-understandable jabronis or some remarkable programs only to be criticized by them on television.

 “What good days were they when my father in 1942 who worked as respectable area in-charge in a village near Kisen Ganj”, said Taruna Aunty to her hard-working maid, Sumi, who never had a chance in her life to even go near a school.

 However, Sumi’s son who is in nineth standard and daughter to be appearing for school final exams just two months later, regularly comes to be privately tutored by Richa’s father-in-law for better performance in their exams.

 Richa greets Sumi as ‘Sumi didi’ respectfully only to be sniffed at her by Sumi didi in return as Taruna Aunty had already declared her need and position in family much higher than Richa.

 Sumi didi’s husband is a highly social person mostly spending his time and money, even at late hours, on game of cards, benevolently drinking local made alcohol, gifting some useless earrings to some dada’s alluring wife. When he got too depressed by his regular misdeeds he used to beat up and abuse Sumu didi in front of their children.

Sumi didi was a brave woman. She bore with everything and yet brought up her children the best she could. She was smart too. She always kept her backup, the ruffian desperados of her area, whom she offered occasional alms to keep them on her side to stand for her whenever she needed, whether or they could not monetarily help her.

 According to Taruna Aunty, Richa only has the job of upbringing her child, be a back up for her husband when he is on tour and support him with whatever work experience she had when he got fagged out and do some freelancing if time permits. And all of this Richa did diligently, complaining now and then, which was certainly a taboo, of mental exhaustion and physical pain.

 Amar had borne with his parents-in-law’s respectful indignity inflicted at him with all his dignity. Ramu da did a great job as an odd jobs’ attendant at all the apartments of our building, though mostly he used to get a fair share in the commission earned by the homely service deliverers. He is seen mostly missing when other aids are absent, when his services are mostly sought after. According, to Richa’s father Ramu da’s job hours were more tiresome who could never be seen before 10a.m. in the morning and 9p.m. in the evening being a full-time caretaker in the building apartment system than that of Amar’s brainstorming, physically draining work at shopfloor in a locomotive company 8.40a.m to 7p.m., starting Monday to Friday and even sometimes on alternate Saturdays in a week.

Differences continued but so did the struggles and pursuit of happiness for Richa, Pramila Aunty, Taruna Aunty and Sumi didi. Best are the times when they all sat together in some family or neighbourhood reunion and watch a game of football or a movie together or even meet each other on a tour to a nice nearby place for a picnic.