Women Are ‘Living Beings’ Too

When I was 6-8 years old, I once saw papa slapping mom, I didn’t know the reason and next morning mom prepared papa’s breakfast and mine. 

Mom even spoke to papa. I was astonished by the fact that after being slapped by papa she didn’t weep nor got enraged. How could she be like that? This was the only question which exasperated me all the time in school.

After school, I ask the same question to mom that why she was not angry with papa? She said, “Beta, why would I get angry with him?” I replied, “Because he slapped you at night, I saw and when you slap me, I weep, I get angry at you. Then why didn’t you get angry with papa?

Mom’s spirit got low and her voice became unsettled as if she was not expecting that question from me. At last she said, “Because I am a wife, a mother, a daughter, and they…” I didn’t let her complete her sentence and yelled at her “No! No! our science teacher taught us that living beings can cry, love, hate, talk, see, hear, walk. But non-living things being just things without life, can’t do all this. And you are a living being.”

Mom looked at me as she got a new name, a new identity. She renewed “herself” or as if I had put a mirror in front of her and said, “This is you, a living being.”

Now, I am 18 years old and we both live in our house as “living beings not things.” Its been so much important for us as women to be a daughter, wife, mother, sister, or an aunt. We do this, we do that, but what about us being ourselves?

Ask this question to you and then you may realize ‘who’ you are? Rather than ‘what’ you are?

Deepanshi

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