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.
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