Heart upon my sleeve

My maid, Swati (name changed) barely 19, got married a month back. Then one day she came to work looking tired. Around lunch time, she said she had started feeling giddy. I thought it was all the hard work any newlywed in their community probably goes through. I told her to go home and take rest. The next day she came to me with tears in her eyes. “I am pregnant”, she said. “What?”, “How?”, “Why?”, I just spurted out questions in a fit of anger plus amazement. “Both my husband and I, do not want a baby so soon. My husband has taken a loan of Rs. 1 lakh for the wedding. We want to repay that first. Only then can we think of a child. We want our child to study in an English medium school. We need to save money for that. All our dreams are crashed now”, she continued. “Did you not talk about this, Swati?”, I asked. ”Tai, we were so busy after the wedding my husband and I never got time to talk”, she said. “Ha! And you had time to do all that has gotten you in this situation”, I said to my...

As I lay on bed, I kept thinking of the conversation I had with mom in the evening. Mom had recently attended a function at a relative’s place on the occasion of Guru Pournima. It was to pay respect to some ‘Swamiji’. She was narrating the incidence to me. About 30-40 ladies of different age groups gathered and recited Mantras and sang Bhajans. My mom felt out-of-place. Each of them seemed to have forgotten about their daily worries and sat there completely absorbed in the mantras. There was a sense of devotion, a sense of contentment while they sang ‘Shree Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram’. They all seemed in a happy place. My mom on the other hand was completely bored. She felt weird that when most ladies of her generation enjoyed spirituality why then did she find no pleasure in it. She asked me “Is something wrong with me?” Incidentally, the very next day she was invited to her sister’s place for lunch. After lunch, my aunt asked her to stay a little longer as her Rummy club members would b...