At home, we have a household help, a woman who cooks for us. I just love the tadka daal she makes, whenever I go home, I insist on she making it. Incidentally, where I currently live happens to be her hometown. So, whenever I am home, she asks about the weather, the place, every general thing that comes to her mind.
When she got married she came to my hometown, she had a decent marriage I think, I don't know much about that. What I do know is, after a brief period of married life and two kids, her husband died. I don't know why, I never asked my mum, and my mum knows everything about everybody (and doesn't gossip about it, coz she is a decent woman). Ever since I have known her, she has been a widow who works at four places to earn money.
After her husband died, she took the responsibility of her entire family, old in-laws, an unmarried sister-in-law and two young kids.With her father-in-law's support, she took this brave step and decided to support her husband's family like her own, well, it is her family too, because this crazy thing about marriage is, you end up having two families.
Her problems didn't end there, in fact they just started, her sister and mother-in-law were vicious to her, like it was her fault that her husband died. They would make life hell at home for her. she wouldn't have survived there had it not been for her father-in-law. He was her rock, he would veto everything in her favor whenever he could, even then they two found petty ways to hurt her. She would work from 6 in the morning to 9:30 at night to provide for those people who made her life hell. At times I felt like asking her why did she tolerate them, she could easily leave them to their fates, but I knew what she would say, they were her family, her father-in-law, her kids it's for them that all this was worth it.
Years passed and the viciousness diluted some, then one day, she came to my mum, crying. This is the first time I had seen her cry. I found out later what had happened. Her father-in-law had passed away a few months back, naming their house in her name and from that house, her sister-in-law had thrown her out, forbidden her to meet her children and asked her to not come back.
I was flabbergasted! Was this even possible?
She being a resourceful woman had found for herself temporary arrangements. My mother told her that if the house was legally hers nobody could throw her out and that she should go and stay there. Eventually, she did that and for once, sized down her sister-in-law a bit, her problems have toned down a little since then while not dying away altogether.
Through all this, this woman has shown an enormous amount of courage and strength. Everyday she would work with full dedication, never once did she take leave. She smiles all the time, she has an easy laugh which is always on her lips. She has raised two nice kids who are getting proper education, and she makes awesome tadka daal.
I have grown to respect and admire her. She is one woman who is my hero. She has not done anything extraordinary maybe, neither is she very erudite, to so many other houses where she works, she is just their cook, but she is so much more than that. She is an inspirational story to me. She is in my list of women who inspire. There are so many more in my life. They are the women who worry about me, who want me to be better than what I am today, they are the ones I hate sometimes but also the ones I will always look up to. These are the strong women who are shaping the society more than anyone else. Everybody will have them in their vicinity, homes, offices or other places, because these are the everyday women who make a difference.
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