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While starting a new life with a life partner again, she needs to leave her mayka, the maternal home. Her love for her parents and siblings, her job, her surname, her room — just to survive in a new place which will never be hers ever.
Women tend to survive with this inbuilt feature of leaving everything for someone or something else.
The story starts right from the emergence of the fetus in mother’s womb. If it’s a girl, kill her to make space for a boy baby.
If, unfortunately, she came in to this world. At first, she has to leave her toys for her siblings, her studies for financial troubles, her smile for family, her innocence for cultural expectations.
Later, she leaves behind her identity for everyone’s happiness and her self-respect to fit into the ethics and values of the society.
Nobody ever gets affected or bothered how painful the process can be, how difficult to adjust with the changes. They only expect, expect her to smile, expect her to keep others happy and contented.
And if she luckily survives all these, she is expected to be highly educated without any ambition, she should be knowledgeable but without any opinion of her own.
She should have soft voice, decent personality, capable of handling situations. But she could not raise her voice during adverse circumstances.
And if she dares to do to that, she would be tagged mannerless, rude and arrogant.
These practices and norms have not changed since decades and would not change for many more decades to come!
So what if we have reached to Mars and developed superfast metro trains and rockets? Leaving everything behind is what a woman’s destiny is!
Image Source: Still from the film Photograph
I am a person who believes that happiness lies in enjoying little things in life. Love to read. At times prefer to write to pour my heart out on paper. read more...
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Being a writer, Nivedita Louis recognises the struggles of a first-time woman writer and helps many articulate their voice with development, content edits as a publisher.
“I usually write during night”, says author Nivedita Louis during our conversation. Chuckling she continues,” It’s easier then to focus solely on writing. Nivedita Louis is a writer, with varied interests and one of the founders of Her Stories, a feminist publishing house, based in Chennai.
In a candid conversation she shared her journey from small-town Tamil Nadu to becoming a history buff, an award-winning author and now a publisher.
Nivedita was born and raised in a small town in Tamil Nadu. It was for schooling that she first arrived in Chennai. Then known as Madras, she recalls being awed by the city. Her love-story with the city, its people and thus began which continues till date. She credits her perseverance and passion to make a difference to her days as a vocational student among the elite sections of Madras.
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