Behind the Curtain

-

Who is she? Is she the one, sitting on the railway platform selling the chickpeas and corn? Or is she the one selling the beauty items at the shop or is she the one selling insurance products at her desk at office or is she the one setting a huge business deal for her company at the AC chamber inside her office on 29th floor of a tech city area in Bangalore? She is a working woman who is earning her sustenance as well as marking a name for herself in the society. Now, this looks tremendously enthusiastic when we say the word 'working woman'. It empowers the reader and gratifies them.

But if we peep a little, behind the curtain, it would lead us to a series of unanswered dubieties.

The lady selling chickpeas on the platform, Sushma, would never do this out of passion evidently, but to feed her four children born from a man who is unable to prop up the family alone and needed her as the succour. The onus to feed these many children along with giving birth to them reclined on her. Her husband had a ‘golgappa’ or ‘puchka’ pushcart. This pushcart would always be stationed near her chickpea selling arrangement so that he would be able to take a nap whenever he would feel so or would go for the refreshment rounds. Then she would sell those round crunchy friable. The reason for her not selling this regularly as she is a demure middle-aged woman who would be shy of being called ‘puchka wali’. We never or hardly find any woman with this profession of selling ‘golgappas’; unknown of any specific reasons or may be due to the long held conceptual belief of dividing work between genders. But, all the requirements for selling this favourite eatable of every Indian, are being prepared by Sushma after returning home every day at night. All would sleep out of tiredness but she, under the small lamp, would make everything ready for the next day’s endeavour.

Geeta, the shopkeeper of beauty items, is being necessitated by her destiny to sit at this shop and make fool of the ladies with the over expected conditions being merely fulfilled by these beauty compounds. She would give all the unnecessary reasons if these products would not suffice the customer’s suppositions. Not being left with any other option as this shop feeds her belly thrice a day when she had been thrown out of her father’s house by the two older brothers and their wives after her parents’ death. She was brought to the house by her father when her husband died after three months of their marriage.

She, Anushka, is the best employee of her office. She had the endurance to sell any insurance product given to her. Her superiors are too much happy with her consistent performance. But it was not the scenario three years back when she would be demeaned by her husband often of being a house wife. To validate her meaningful existence, she considered this job as her rescue.

The long working days and even nights are too much stressful for Prajakta. Setting up the business deals and making that happen too, was taking a toll on her health due to improper eating habits, lack of exercise and overemphasised work conditions. But she had to keep working to maintain the societal standards as well as to bear the expenses of her daughter being sent to a reputed high standard overly expensive school of the city and her husband who sits at home for no specific reason after his business had been bad on him.

The lives of these few women, behind the curtain, would surely send the readers into the world of an inscrutable enigma thus suspecting the rest of the junta of the same gender.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR

-
Image
Who would rescue when the lonely Suzain would find no solace in her solitude? She kept wondering. Always. She would not go out to mingle with people and sit at her desk all day writing something beautiful, that no one had read. She says it is lovely but who knows what it is. One fine morning she woke up determined to conclude her loneliness. Dressed beautifully, as she said, gone out of the house in search of the knight in shining armor. She rambled in places and coffee shops. She ate and shopped. Upon reaching home, she realized she had not done what she was meant to: search for the knight in shining armor. So went out the next morning again, determined and confident, as she said. She saw the water park, and after walking a few miles, excited and elated, she bought the ticket and went inside to explore it. She had fun while she tried every game. Came out of it in the evening, tired but happy. She lost track of her determination and surrendered herself to the cozy bed at her home and s...
Read more

THE ROAD WAS NARROW

-
Image
The road was narrow, and so were the people's perceptions. They would fight physically at the slightest instigation or verbal accusations. There was no law and order. The intellectuals were the decision-makers of the society. They would condemn the common junta when they considered things to be wrong.   In the name of religion and knowledge, the learned philosophers and the clergymen would take advantage of the people. The people were declared bad because they thought so. It was the ‘moral/religious poaching’. There were thieves, cheats, and the hypocrites. Besides those belonging to the priority class of the society, the women were treated as commodities. They had no voice and could only follow whatever the male section decided but their toughness was commendable. Their desires, sexual as well as mental and intellectual, not being fulfilled, made them go wild and take certain steps to be regretted later. There were fewer or no male-female interactions thus, leading to secrecy, f...
Read more

MY OLD GRANNY

-
Image
She had been sitting unwaveringly for the last two hours now. Not a single drop of tear had rolled down her gentle and wrinkled face. The only words she repeated whenever someone would talk to her were, ‘Good for him. Who would look after him if he had been bedridden? I am too old now.’ He was 97, and still took care of his lady, who was in her 80s. She was sick and had aging, fragile bones. He was, though, sturdy enough to hold her hand and walk her inside the house; he had been her delicate buttress-weak physically but morally strong enough to support her. Even though he was sometimes sick, he had never stepped away from performing his domestic duties towards his better half, children, and grandchildren. She had been away at her daughter’s place for a few days after many years and could not talk to him for the last time. She regretted. But they had been together for 65 years, and now they needed no words to communicate; they just knew each other’s thoughts, and so life went on. ...
Read more