Got Full marks for Disobedience?

The famous American essayist and poet Henry David Thoreau said and I quote ‘Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.’ Unquote.

I am enamoured by this quote and understood very early in life that it is not easy to live it.

As I begin to introduce myself, I have to say- I am a girl from Bihar. Now, I have already hit the abyss, isn’t it? Across the globe, as soon as a girl is born, she inherits the responsibility to disobey the patriarchal mores and sexism to prove her merit and the perception about the state I come from makes it even more difficult.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed disobeying my parents like most adolescents and teens do but being a girl, it wasn’t easy. I come from an education-oriented family however, my parents were not too ambitious about my education and hoped that it should be to the extent that it fetches a good match for their daughter. They had chosen the treaded path of science for me and Imagine, back then I disobeyed and chose to study advertising for my graduation. Well, my parents had no clue what their daughter was studying until I topped the first year and later all three years of graduation. For a change, my father was in agreement, happy and proud. Our relationship was becoming ideal and then I went on to crack one of the leading Communications B-Schools- Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad. My father was even more proud and I was glad for making him so.

It has often happened with me in life that as the journey starts getting smooth, there always comes a bump at the time when I am about to reach the destination. And so also it happened when I was just 6 months away from completing my MBA. In the middle of a dance rehearsal for an upcoming event at college, I received a phone call to be informed that my father is critically unwell with heart-attack and wanted me to visit home. For all I knew, I had the least idea that he was no more when I was informed about his desire to meet me.

There are turning points in life for all and that probably was mine. While all my friends were targeting corporate jobs in metro cities, I prayed that I get a job in Patna where my mother stayed alone. And when you really want something, the universe conspires to make that happen for you. In the most unlikely turn of events, government of Bihar for its Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) Biometric based project now evolved into UIDAI/Aadhar was looking for a communication professional from MICA.

Well, who would like to go to Patna after studying at MICA, so I got my first job hands down in order to be by my mother’s side when she needed me the most. While everyone at college including myself believed that my decision to start my career from a small city is full of risks in terms of career growth opportunities, in hind-sight that decision proved to be the biggest booster for my career. It was a blessing in disguise which carved my path for my entry into one of the most reputed organizations in the world- the United Nations.

While my resolution to take care of my lonely mother and career were set, the constant pressure to get married was looming large on the horizon. Well not all my college time decisions turned to be useful and one of the most unpromising of them was to turn down Aki’s proposal.

Anyway, with my experience, I can equate the exercise of finding a marriageable guy with that of pollution in Delhi. It only gets worse every passing year. Well eventually, I came across my present husband and here began another episode of dis-obedience.

My mother and brother hoped me to be settled in a happily ever after marriage but as opposed to their imagination I chose a nomad who shifts locations every 2 years and that too to places one would have never heard of before popular films like Uri hit the screens. Yes, I married an Army-Officer and after 6 years of long-distance marriage, recently we started living a married life in Delhi.

In the meanwhile, I had already spent 7.5 years living alone and working in India’s North-East. Suddenly, last year, I felt that ‘mid-life crisis’ has hit me before time and I took another unusual decision to avail Special Leave from work and re-connect with self and life with fresh vigor. I shifted to Delhi to stay with my husband. And as I am left with only 6 months into my leave with multitude of incomplete plans, I am not sure whats the next big disobedience I am going to take up.

A meeting - November 2019

Yesterday, I met an old friend from school who is settled in London now. Such are the perks of living in Delhi. There is a pattern to our interactions which goes in a way that after 2004, our interactions have been mostly once in two years. The last time we met in our hometown according to him was to bring me ‘ivory sheets’ in 2004; I studied advertising at graduation.

Well, when I was in the process of choosing, qualifying and taking admission in this course from apparently the best college in the capital of the state of Bihar, I had to batten down the hatches. Obviously no? Which parent of the 2000s would have understood and approved of Advertising as a subject to study? It was a long battle which I eventually won with the only consolation for my father that ‘She is studying in the best college of the city’ and never wanting to spell any further details.

Yesterday was almost like rediscovering a ‘me’ that I had buried in oblivion. The juvenile days of class 8-10 were recalled. There were so many things that I had forgotten, which I realised as he was mentioning them. The land line phones, my fascination for writing letters, my pimples, the determination to lose the last ounce of flesh on cheeks, the craving to go out of city only with friends and to break-free.

It was interesting to hear him talk about the hardships of staying in European countries. To meet a general physician, there is a waiting of 7 days, proving an ailment as emergency is tougher than cracking SSB exam and there is constant stress of missing the relevant metro without having a choice of another public transport. No wonder, for an excruciating eye problem which the NHP doctors failed to identify as an emergency, he was asked to wait for 4 days with the confirmation that it will heal on its own. As it was a reoccurring problem, he knew the medicine that worked but couldnt buy it without prescription in London and ofcourse no doctor agreed to write it. He had no choice but to fly to India, buy the medicine from a random pharmacy, apply and get fine in half an hour. Nonetheless, he went back to London and visited the NHP hoping for a long-term solution. Lo and behold, the doctor says ‘ Did not I tell you that it will heal on its on within 4 days’? With a poker, he said to himself, “I am happy the whole episode was still cheaper than consulting a private practitioner in London”. My take on this is that I have enough of my own logic defying anxieties to deal with, who is going to add to it the woe of worrying about missing the metro. Hearing his rant, I was sad and happy both. Sad because like half of the educated population of India, the idea of the utopia outside India was shattered. I would miss the little solace, I would find in imagining myself living in foreign country. Happy because-I thanked God and counted the conveniences and flexibility of our country- so what, if we are overcrowded and using carbon-filter masks to breath.

I have mentioned the pattern of our interactions, so this was after 2008 when we had met face to face in Pune last and had talked in detail on any medium after 2013. It necessitated that I share with him all the attention I got from guys in post-graduation college while he wasn’t any behind throwing names of girls who used to die for him. It was probably our way of self-ego massage, now that we are around 10 years ahead of college li