Your everyday superwoman

I am back in Mumbai and in the place that- even after three-or-thereabout years- continues to fascinate me. Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) is a world away from everything one excepts, imagines or even remembers.

More than the people, it is the place that is so magical; at least to me, it is a place that respects the need to explore and think about anything that strikes a fancy in one's mind. Traditional and conventional or absolutely unheard-of, one can comfortably find space to dwell on ideas and that is what I love most about TISS. Fewer pretenses than usual.

So yesterday, while Parul and I were drinking nimbu chai at the canteen a little late in the night (by Mumbai standards i.e.; in Dehradun the hour would probably be in the graveyard shift) one of the taayis came over and flopped in a chair next to us. In TISS- and I assume in all of Mumbai and the larger Maharashtra- any woman older to you is 'taayi' and the ladies we call taayi here are a bunch of wonderfully sassy women who keep the campus clean, run the canteen or watch over the laundry loads in the washing machines.

The taayis sometimes get take a few minutes off work and sit down to chat with people they are fond of and Parul is a complete taayi-pet in that sense. What I like is that Parul does not know taayi's name and the taayi does not know if Parul is studying or working. But there is a fondness between them and they talk effortlessly.

Parul tells taayi that she is leaving from here soon and returning to her hometown Delhi soon and as it invariably does when one is over 23 years of age, the conversation shifts to marriage. Parul, as is her usual reaction to the subject, throws her head back and changes her facial expression to the most distasteful look you will find in the book and says "karwa denge jab karwa denge; dekh lenge".

And taayi asks if she does not want to marry, to which Parul shakes her head vehemently and affirms her absolute dislike. Then she asks taayi about her wedding and the story we heard amazed me, not for its absolute, heart-wrenching struggles but for the simplicity with which it was related. No melodrama, no "mere saath aisa hua", no self-pity.

Taayi got married at the age of 12 years and by the time she was 13, she had her first daughter. 'A child giving birth to a child', Parul says. By the time taayi reached 19 years, she had 6 children and it was only then that she came to know about sterilization and had her tubes tied. In a year or two, her husband passes away and now she is left to fend for herself and her six children.

But she did and beautifully so. Her oldest daughter is 21 now and taayi says she will marry when she wants to. But here is the most beautiful thing. The second daughter, who is 20 now is married. Taayi explains that she married "dil se" and then had two children, after which taayi got her daughter's permanent birth control operation too. She says they should not suffer the same fate as she did and she says it without any hint of sorrow. When she shared this last bit, I felt I had shrunk to half an inch in size or that taayi had suddenly become eight feet tall.

How easy it is for us to get carried away by our own experiences and to let that dictate our ideas for our children or let it influence our opinion about things. But taayi kept it simple. Her children will marry when they want to and if they fall in love at 18 then they will get married at 18. Despite everything she went through, she did not let it poison her mind.

An everyday superwoman, like so many others. This story was heard in Mumbai but I am convinced could be just as easily heard in Dehradun or any other part of the country and the world.