A Woman of Substance

It’s definitely not easy being a woman, but if I get another life and, if I get a say in the gender I get to be in my next life, I will positively opt to be a woman again.

When I was 4 years old my father expired and my mom raised me and my brothers single-handedly. She had never worked until then, she was always provided for by her brothers and by her husband. But suddenly with the death of my father, she was pushed into an alien world. A world that she did not understand, a world that looked at her as a prey, a world that judged every move of hers.

My father was working as a bank manager, and after his death the job went to my mother. But since my mother had studied only till her 10^th, she was offered a clerical post in the same bank. Her brothers, my uncles, assured her that she need not work, and that they would look after her always. My mother already devastated by my father’s death had to face another colossal battle. She did not want to work, because she was terrified of going out and working, a world that she had never entered. She had doubts regarding her own capability and she was happy to hear that her brothers would take care of her and her children.

But it was my father’s brothers who reprimanded my mother and persuaded her into working. My uncles would have looked after our family for a year or two, but then we would have become mere burden in their eyes. After all they had their own families, their own commitments.

My mother finally started work in the bank. I was just a child, around 5 years, during that time. So I never realized the struggle that she had to face every day. But when I grew up, my mother used to sit beside me and tell me her story. Every day she used to come back from her work, with tears in her eyes. She did not understand her work, the numbers, and the transactions in the bank. She was terrified of asking help from the male members in her office, lest they take advantage of her naivety.

It was around this time that my mother became close to one of her female colleagues, a Christian. Her friend tutored her, explained her clearly how things got done in the bank and 3 decades later, she is still my mother’s best friend.

My mother had to work and take care of her three young children single-handedly. Yes, she was never there for the Parent-Teacher’s meeting in my school, because she was busy working, providing food and shelter to her children.

Image Source: Google Images

 My mother is my role model. I had made a promise to myself that I’ll never be financially dependent on anyone in my life. When faced with adversity I’ll not trace my footsteps back. I’ll dig my feet deeper into the sand and wait till the storm abates. And I’ll provide a decent education to my daughter, because I know that by giving her good education, I’m making sure that she is ready to face any hardships in life.

That is what my mother gifted me, the gift of education. When money was not plentiful in our house, she sent me to the best Engineering college, she helped me get a Lecturing job when I failed to secure a job in a Software company. But I did not want to fail in my mother’s eyes. I struggled hard, quit my lecture job after a year, lived alone in Bangalore for 6 months and enrolled myself in a software course.

Today by God’s grace I work in one of the leading Software Company, I earn well, I live a comfortable life. But I will never forget that I am what I am today because of my mother’s struggle, because of her labor and tussle with the world. I hope and pray that I can be as good a mother as my mother is to me.

This post is also submitted as an entry for the Woman of Substance Contest at Blogadda