I'm not Sita....thank God!!

Today I sat mulling over Sita. A lot of Indians have not come a long way from the times of Sita. She silently accepted all atrocities just because she was the wife of Ram. She was dutiful, willing to go into exile, was kidnapped, led an impoverished life, made to go through the test of fire, yet discarded because of public opinion when she was pregnant. She was not even dignified with a separate home or alimony. She swallowed her pride yet again to be humiliated and crept into mother earth to save face. This is part of our religious scripture. I understand standards were different then. Men and Women were expected to have different roles in life.What shocks me is how some people are still of the same mentality.

Let me come back to the present times some 3 years back. I have been a moderately popular girl all my life. I got my fair share of male attention. I was never short on suitors. When I fell in love, it was totally and completely. Other male attention did not matter to me. When my first marriage did not work. I was shaken but not broken. In fact I never did feel it was either's mistake. I knew had we been just friends we'd still be together. We were just not meant to be a couple. We had a cherubic , angelic son, we both dote on. i took the divorce in my stride, knowing it was karmic, my lessons and his would make us better people. My son was and is my anchor, my youngest and most patient teacher....

After my divorce too I had loads of male attention. I was not yet ready for another relationship. I so wanted to fall in love, experience that high again. What shocked me was the attitude of the women around me from the previous generation. For them as far as I was concerned, my life was over. They treated me as though I had some contagious disease. When I started the conversation about whether or not I was ready for a second marriage i was politely put down with " life can be fine if you're single", A lady asked me point blank " why did he leave you?" I gasped, laughed at her assumption he must have left me, something just had to be wrong with the woman if she's divorced!!!! Another looking at me with daggers in her eyes, so angry I could be happy and attending a wedding in my disgraced state shot at me " who knows why you couldn't make it work, we all have gone through highs and lows" , another well meaning lady told me " its a mistake to keep your son with you, no one will accept you now. "   the clincher was this one " you should quit your job, go back to your parents home, what's left for you in your life any way, now live for your son"   I was horrified, mortified more than all of this I was sad.

I was sad, these were all women. Women clutching to their husbands with all their worth, proud because their identity had the word married in it. These women did not comprehend the pain of a divorce. A dream, a relationships, a friendship gone bad. They did not applaud the young girl for her determination to move on, to be happy , to still believe in love and marriage. They were mean, they were cruel, they were scared. They live in their cocoons. They still believe their job is to accept what ever is dished out to them by their husbands and they are better because they suffer silently. They love being the victims, the martyrs. They still live in the Era of Sita.

I am no Sita. I moved on. I have the capacity to love the good parts of my broken marriage, to still love my ex- husband because I let not pain turn into poison. I took charge of my life. I believed in love and marriage, and I took chances in life. Fear is the opposite of life. You are alive if you're dying every moment. You are not alive if you can't be happy in another's joy. And to those women who told me men never accept a child of another man, all I've to say.... thank God men don't think like women. I've yet to meet a man Indian or not who did not propose to me knowing fully well I am a mother. In-fact my current husband told me he wanted to marry me after he saw the kind of mother I was to my son. So there!!!!