Move aside, please.
It was prickly hot when I walked down to the grocer's for onions and other miscellanies on a typical Summers-at-Chennai afternoon last week. The busy shopkeeper, among other things had noticed me and even before he'd uttered a word, I knew what he was to talk about. Except that his question was framed way different from what I'd braced up for.
"What, it isn't still winter there in Shillong, or is it?" That, could have been an innocent question, or so I thought until I saw that nasty, taunting grin spreading across his face.
My foot!
Well, this is the scenario:
I've been camping at my parents' in Chennai, for the past 6 months and the incessant million dollar question almost everybody darts across is, "but why?"
All of this is basically due to the fact that my husband lives out there in Shillong and I stay here.
My reasons for staying here? Here we go:
1. Its winter up there (Shillong) and I wish to keep my daughter cosy - she's 17 months old.
2. I've been working on reviving my now-sleeping career life (my mother takes care of my daughter), which essentially involves attending some classes, among other things.
Given that, I've been fictionalized into atleast a fifty different conspiracy theories on our alleged fall-apart ( Good heavens!) and/or the after-effects of living apart. And the grocer episode should tell you how quick and wide the word has spread.
Fine, I knew I should necessarily overlook such occurrences, but nature, with no exception, holds up one fundamental law- that of the threshold.
That law was invoked somewhere last Sunday , when a relative had the audacity to ask in that superior, testing , taunting tone as in "So how does it feel to celebrate your birthday without your husband by your side? He doesn't even care to come down for your big day, does he?"
Ouch! That hurt.
I'd survived questions of the likes of
"does he even call you?" (Obviously, yes!),
"now why would you want to work at all? (what in the heavens does that imply?)
Can't you just bask in the bliss of your family life; career isn't all that substantial for a woman, you know." (I'll come for that later, some other time.)
However, that deliberate dagger to the heart was that acrimonious query from my kin, which had made it to the top of how-mean-sheer-words-could-be.
That could have very well been the after-effect of my shattered childish agenda that people are usually kind to you on birthdays, but yes, it was over the top and out of the blue.
That brings me here, where, I, in all modesty, ask all of these self-convinced guides and self-appointed gyan-gurus, who have an opinion and/or an advice on every aspect of somebody-else's-life, to move aside and mind your own business, please.
Of course, thank you all, that built-in pressure, finally, has given way to this fret-up, I'm officially free from the looming effects of writer's block that had had me in for almost 2 years.
We're still very much in love, my Chandru and I.Being away hasn't changed what we mean to each other. Thus I rest my case.
P.S.: Been typing all this from that Android Tablet that my husband had sent across as a birthday gift :)
Thank you Chandru, for Meghna, this gift and for holding up our love and trust, at all times, without which I could have never lashed back like I have, in total confidence and in all fairness.
"What, it isn't still winter there in Shillong, or is it?" That, could have been an innocent question, or so I thought until I saw that nasty, taunting grin spreading across his face.
My foot!
Well, this is the scenario:
I've been camping at my parents' in Chennai, for the past 6 months and the incessant million dollar question almost everybody darts across is, "but why?"
All of this is basically due to the fact that my husband lives out there in Shillong and I stay here.
My reasons for staying here? Here we go:
1. Its winter up there (Shillong) and I wish to keep my daughter cosy - she's 17 months old.
2. I've been working on reviving my now-sleeping career life (my mother takes care of my daughter), which essentially involves attending some classes, among other things.
Given that, I've been fictionalized into atleast a fifty different conspiracy theories on our alleged fall-apart ( Good heavens!) and/or the after-effects of living apart. And the grocer episode should tell you how quick and wide the word has spread.
Fine, I knew I should necessarily overlook such occurrences, but nature, with no exception, holds up one fundamental law- that of the threshold.
That law was invoked somewhere last Sunday , when a relative had the audacity to ask in that superior, testing , taunting tone as in "So how does it feel to celebrate your birthday without your husband by your side? He doesn't even care to come down for your big day, does he?"
Ouch! That hurt.
I'd survived questions of the likes of
"does he even call you?" (Obviously, yes!),
"now why would you want to work at all? (what in the heavens does that imply?)
Can't you just bask in the bliss of your family life; career isn't all that substantial for a woman, you know." (I'll come for that later, some other time.)
However, that deliberate dagger to the heart was that acrimonious query from my kin, which had made it to the top of how-mean-sheer-words-could-be.
That could have very well been the after-effect of my shattered childish agenda that people are usually kind to you on birthdays, but yes, it was over the top and out of the blue.
That brings me here, where, I, in all modesty, ask all of these self-convinced guides and self-appointed gyan-gurus, who have an opinion and/or an advice on every aspect of somebody-else's-life, to move aside and mind your own business, please.
Of course, thank you all, that built-in pressure, finally, has given way to this fret-up, I'm officially free from the looming effects of writer's block that had had me in for almost 2 years.
We're still very much in love, my Chandru and I.Being away hasn't changed what we mean to each other. Thus I rest my case.
P.S.: Been typing all this from that Android Tablet that my husband had sent across as a birthday gift :)
Thank you Chandru, for Meghna, this gift and for holding up our love and trust, at all times, without which I could have never lashed back like I have, in total confidence and in all fairness.
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