MY REALISATION - You are a First Citizen of this country

“Only a Life Lived for Others is a Life Worthwhile” - Albert Einstein

As a young girl of 20 years I would dream of my imagined ‘tall, dark, and handsome prince’. This thought was conditioned through the social upbringing. Family friends would all tease that one of these days your ‘prince’ will come and take you away with him – this was the implied worth of me as person. This conditioning gave me a reason for life that - I need to fall in love and only then would be life worth living.

Maybe it was this pre-conditioning that from childhood that subconsciously I did seek out the man of my dreams and then went on to follow his dreams to make my life worth living (wasn’t this the message driven into me since childhood?). As per this conditioning, my worth and life purpose was supposed to be ‘Married to live a Happy life ever after’ by supporting my husband and his family. In this process I soon realized that I was living the life of a ‘second citizen’ in this world of ‘LOVE’. My existence was now defined to live for my husband, his pleasure, needs, wants and desires, his family – I or My Self was nowhere in the real picture. I was dependent on my husband for everything – emotional happiness, psychological calm and daily material and luxury needs. This dependency instead of giving me happiness and satisfaction, actually brought in feelings of emptiness, emotional separation, loss of self worth and a longing which at the time I was unable to define.

All through my life since childhood I had seen and faced biased and partial behavior as a girl. I had to study in a Hindi medium school while my brothers were sent to English schools run by Jesuit Missionaries. My brothers were given the luxury of going to school in a cycle rickshaw and I had to walk 3 km to and from school even in high temperatures over 42°c. My father would religiously teach and enquire about my brother’s daily performance whereas infrequently he would perfunctorily ask how I was doing in school. I would not even be called by my given name! The brothers never showed any sensitivity to this condition.

My thoughts and beliefs underwent a tremendous upheaval during this time and I questioned myself about my real purpose in life and dreams and life goals. I realized that I had no real goal of my own and actually living a life of servitude. These processes were not without the expected guilt from the years of programming inputs since childhood. The turmoil going on inside me was unfathomable and beyond my comprehension and understanding at the time. Somewhere I wanted to be accepted as the person Hina and not just as sister, wife and mother.

The realization of reality was whether I was living in his world or my world – celebration of his achievements and empathy and sympathy and towards his frustrations and failures in return for food, shelter and care from my husband. Was this the life of the girl’s dreams, now turned woman and mother and wife? Did I have no entity of my own? Would I be remembered only as wife and mother and not as ‘Hina’? Would I always remain the second citizen all my life? These thoughts created a tremendous turmoil within me (which I could not share with anyone).

It’s more than 50 years since I was that dreamy girl. Now a lot has changed with my experiences in my existence. I have grown out of my thought processes of dependency syndromes of the past and created my existence as input for thousands of women in India and abroad - just the 5/6 people do not matter anymore for giving me purpose and happiness.

In retrospect I now realize how depended I was and his love and my appeasement towards my husbands and his family’s wishes and needs and their behavior towards me.

Well things are much different today after a most tempestuous journey. This was a journey of search and findings about my own desires, need for achievement, setting realistic goals and achieving them, creating my own entity as the ‘First Citizen’. How I went about doing this is a very long story for me to share later.

Today, I do not ‘depend’ on anyone, know my self-worth and accepted and recognized as a strong supporter of women economic empowerment.

I am very happy to state that I enjoy this freedom of thought and action without guilt or emotional baggage whatsoever.

What I have faced in the past is still very prevalent in today’s Indian households. My special message to all Women Fraternity is ‘Do not look for joy of life in a dependent’s role. You have a right to be the First Citizen and have the freedom to choose what happens with you. Through your creation of your own entity you can still look for joy in helping others.