I type with my eyes closed and my imagination wildly open - I'm in Punjab. I'm at the Widow's colony - where the women that we talked about a few weeks ago who suffered from the 1984 riots live (can't get that topic out of my head ever since we discussed it). I'm sitting with these women, listening to there stories and sharing moments of happiness and some moments of sadness. Mostly happiness though because that is what this is all about. Letting go of the past and looking forward to the ability to bring change into our lives.
I digress:
Ever since my aunt who recently ran away from an abusive 39 years of marriage and family friend (also from a similar situation) have been living with my family, I have been struggling to enjoy being home. Break was a challenge. I wanted to stay home because I promised these women I would hang out. I promised to take them shopping, to help them with their resume's, to help them apply for jobs and just to kick it with them for a little bit. It was hard!
Hard to watch them laugh with me during the day, go for walks and preoccupy ourselves for hours in conversations about random things only to find that at night they would go to their rooms and cry. I didn't know what to do. How can I remove suffering from someone who has ONLY known suffering in what was suppose to be a loving relationship? I don't know. I have no answer to this. They go through mood swings. First they are happy to have left, then they feel like they are burdening others by leaving, then they say they miss companionship. Should I go back to him? My response is always no. That comes from a selfish spot - one that has never experienced what they are going through or have been through.
One night - I went into the 30-year-old family friends room and asked her why she was so down? She broke down. "I just want my own place, my own spot in this world," she said. I understand that. Even though she knows she is always welcome at our house, it's hard not having your own house and family at 30. That is a very difficult choice. "The week before my 20th birthday, my dad died in a car accident," she said. She explained that she had the same relationship with her dad that I have with mine.
"Then, six months after he died, my mom died from breast cancer. Just my brother, sister and I were left." Literally, within one year her life changed. "I still had to take my finals and I did," she told me in between sobs. At this point, I gazed at her in admiration or her relative stability despite what she was telling me. "Then, my older sister got married and my dad's side of the family decided we didn't exist to them." "My family was wealthy but now we had nothing. My dad's business owners took over his business and didn't even give us a penny.
My mom's side took us in but to pay for school we had to sell our house - the only thing we had that stored 19 years of happy memories." All gone. She said she would come to the house every day for five months after they sold it. "I would stop their after school and just cry in disbelief."
A moment of hope: "A family from America was visiting India and I was introduced to their son through family friends. In a month I was married." Her sobs really picked up now and she said "for the first time, I thought, I can get over this and start my own family to pre-occupy my thoughts." "I told my fiance that I come with a lot of baggage and am solely responsible for my younger brother's well-being. He smiled and reassured me that I could take care of my younger brother while being in America."
They were married. They moved to America and then he cut her off from EVERYTHING. "I wasn't allowed to talk to my brother for an entire year, my phone calls were always chaperoned and on speaker phone, everything was restricted." She cried and I cried. I can't get her story out of my head. I told her I admired her so much and we both slept. I pray everyday that things work out for her. She deserves happiness, we all do.
Back to my trip:
But, they remind me of the women in the Widows Colony of Punjab. The one's whose lives were literally snatch from them with no compensation. I just want to talk to them. Then, I would travel to Chandigarh to see my grandpa. His house sits at the bottom of the Himalayan peaks and standing on the rooftop is comparable to Heaven on Earth. The drive is the best part. Windows open in the taxi - the smells of the motherland, of the fields and the tranquil sounds of an overpopulated country are surprisingly calming. The people everywhere working hard or hardly working but continuously providing me with the reassurance that life moves forward no matter where you are. Then, the sounds of the taxi driver's dated Bollywood tunes. I love and hate those tunes. I love that they will always be musically the same and hate that through time the lyrical quality changes.
Eyes are open - where am I? My room. Stack of notes, not making progress BUT that felt good.
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