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Chapter 9 : There's Another Life After

Women seem to nurture a relationship and attach significance to emotions within a relationship more than men. That one year of my life changed the twenty-three years of my life. When I was with my parents, I lived on my own terms; I was like a free bird roaming around the house, reading and sleeping most of the time. But after coming to my in-laws' house, my life took a 360-degree turn. Nobody talks about it, but when you get married and come to another house, you are welcomed, showered with love and looked after by everyone around you. What people forget to reveal is that there is a rulebook for every house. This book is more like a constitution in itself. If you disobey or act against it, you will have to bear the consequences – unending complaints of your mother-in-law and a disappointed husband.

So here's my rule book of the Saraf house:
Get up early morning even before your alarm rings, take a bath and get ready like a diva, and irrespective of what time it is, enter the kitchen clean and pure.
Put everything in order before you leave your room. A messy room is a big no.
Help your mother-in-law in chores and prepare yourself mentally to work perfectly like her the entire day.
Take initiative to make breakfast. Before finishing it, start thinking about lunch and dinner and just remember feeding yourself because no one else will have time to ask for it.
Never try your recipes, mug up everything taught to you by your mother-in-law, because his maa ke haath ka khana is the best!
Lastly in doing everything and serving others never forget your husband because he is your savior; your new life is his mercy.

The situation is such that after marriage, one needs to get permission from one's husband or mother-in-law to meet one's family or stay at her own house. Women are forever being told to cook a certain dish for your husband, give him rest on weekends and be the perfect one always. Not even once the other person is asked to make an effort. He has been living this life since years and what about us? Why can't we be treated the same? On top of it, we get from our birthplace our surname with our name, which gives us a sense of pride and sense of who we are since childhood. Where we come from... where do we belong...?
Yet that also is taken away and our husbands' surname is attached with our name because if they let a woman be herself, she might end up becoming a threat to the world, to the society and to the people around. This is why mothers are taught to clip the wings of daughters and let the sons do all the talking since childhood!
Before the rulebook finished, I faced another drama in my life when I realized that I had skipped my periods and something was not fine with me.

I had to undergo a series of tests for which after a few weeks, I got to know that I was two months pregnant. My heart broke! This was something I was never looking forward to; it came to me like some worst nightmare. I mentally decided in my mind not to take up this baby, but as soon as I spoke up my mind to my mother-in-law and there I was sitting with my parents and Siddharth in the living room.

There were questions of morality, ethics and finally family expectations thrown at me and in the pressure of it all, my heart once again agreed to be and do what everyone wants. After all, that was how my life had been led.

During pregnancy, a woman is overwhelmed with emotions. Along with the happiness of seeing a baby there comes some not so pleasant things such as nausea, morning sickness, fatigue and much more. In those months, I used to get agitated most of the time because of the hormonal changes taking place inside me. And as the pregnancy progressed, it got difficult to get sleep due to the growing weight of the baby that was creating pressure on the lower back. However, in all this time I always had support, love and care from Siddharth throughout and even my in-laws gave full attention to my food, exercise and my medicines.
This would often make me question if it was the baby who had brought a sudden change around or me. Or did my efforts really work out and they all were finally happy with me? Nevertheless, inside my heart, I always prayed for a son, which would make my in-laws happy. I just wanted to win, win and win over Siddharth's love and my in-laws too, so I gave up my all.

So finally after lots of complexities I gave birth to a fair, cute baby boy. Everyone in the family rejoiced. There were endless celebrations, exchange of gifts and sweets, phone calls, gifts of bouquets, letters, visiting relatives and a well-decorated house. Seeing everyone happy made me happy too. However, it struck me somewhere that I was no more important to anyone around. No one bothered to know how I was feeling. My thoughts and emotions were all over the place, but I didn't know how to name and explain them. I cried and cried, literally for every and no reason. The feeling of intermittent sadness and weeping accompanied me always. I could feel emotional withdrawal of Sid's attention too; Saatvik, my son, became the center of everyone's joy, concern and love.

With passing time Saatvik became the primary focus of my life; everything that I did, every decision that I made all revolved around him. Everything else and every person had become secondary to me; even my own self did not count.