Why She?

‘Why me?’ Preethi never asked this question, though everybody who knew her exclaimed, ‘why she? She has always been such a good human being. Why should she be suffering like this?’ Preethi was lying on her hospital bed with tubes protruding from various parts of her body. This has been her condition for the last six months. She was conscious and her brain was perfect. She was thinking all the time but had no strength to speak out. Neither was she interested. She knew her end was close and she kept rewinding her entire life in her mind.

Preethi was born in a lower-middle-class family. Her father was a clerk in a Government Department. Her mother was a homemaker. Preethi was the eldest of five children. Her childhood was not a rosy one to recall again and again. Her parents struggled to take care of their children with a meagre income. She and her siblings went to a Government school nearby, because they could get mid-day meal there.  

As if there were not enough problems for them to handle, her father died of a heart attack at the age of fifty, when Preethi was in her tenth grade. Her mother Rajini was devastated and went into depression. She was not educated enough to take up a job. All she could do was cooking and household chores. Her friends advised her to use her skills and start catering business. Rajini started cooking in a few houses, as she did not understand the world of business. Preethi somehow finished her degree course with the help of a few of her father’s friends and got into a private company immediately.  

Only after Preethi got into a job, the family started looking up. Her two sisters and two brothers were still in schools and colleges. Her brother Lokesh did well in studies but her other brother Suresh strayed away and became a burden on the family, with all his vices and tantrums. Her sisters were average performers. One of them stopped with 12th grade, while the other somehow finished B.A. with a lot of humps!  

Preethi was immersed in taking care of her family and lost all her youth earning for the family, taking care of her mother, who fell sick, getting her sisters married and handling all the challenges that were thrown at her by her useless brother.  

She was 45 when her mother died. Her sisters and Lokesh settled down in life and Suresh estranged himself from them. Preethi suddenly realised she was all alone. She was now in a top post and earned a lot of respect in her company. But when she came home, she felt very lonely. Of course, she yearned for a life partner but it was not easy at her age. She realised her sisters and brother were too busy with their lives and just paid courtesy visits once in a way. They did mention about her lonely life but did jolly little to help her find a partner.

Maramma came crying one day. She had been working as a domestic help in Preethi’s house for the last 20 years. She had an alcoholic husband and not that she led a happy life till that day. But on that day, the reason for her outburst was different. She had a handicapped daughter aged 22 years, who would be all alone at home, when she came to work. The previous day, her drunkard husband tried to rape her, when she was alone. Thankfully, her neighbours heard her screaming and saved her.  

Preethi was shocked. For days on end, she kept thinking of Maramma’s problem and after a week, she felt she had to do something not only for Maramma’s daughter but for many such hapless people, who suffered so much.  

Thus was born ‘Gagana‘, a home for handicapped girls and women belonging to the poor families. Started as just a day-care centre, Preethi kept adding on many facilities like a school for children, a hostel for their stay, a vocational training centre and also a facility for helping them produce many products that they were trained in and market them. Preethi kept working in the company and also taking care of Gagana until she retired. Thereafter, Gagana became her life and she spent every minute there. She had no time to think of her personal life. Thousands of poor girls and women benefited from her organisation. Many women settled down in good jobs and supported Preethi in her mission.  

She is now 75 and was diagnosed with lung cancer 8 months ago. All her children of Gagana were shocked. She was being treated in the best hospital by the best doctors but fate had other plans. She too was tired. She could no longer bear the pain of the treatment and wanted deliverance. She prayed for an early end, while also praying for Gagana to be taken care of by Shyamala, Lalitha and many others, whom she had groomed. She had made perfect arrangements for passing on the reigns. Not once in her life did she question, ‘Why’. She took life as it unfolded and she did not even question destiny, as to why she was chosen to suffer like this when she had only sacrificed her comforts for others all her life, because she knew nothing on this planet happens as per some pre-planned course. Nature has no bias and blesses and punishes people randomly. She always thanked God for all the blessings in her life. When she did not question God then, when many others were not as lucky as she was, how could she now question Him? Yes. She was blessed to have good parents, as decent life, a good job, a good heart and means to help so many people and the love of all of them. What else she could ask for? Only quick death!