Geetanjali Krishna: Of fickle family members

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

"How can people change their attitudes according to what's convenient at that moment," snorted the nurse. In a crowded hospital cafeteria, both of us couldn't help but overhear a heated debate on the state of Indian cricket on the next table. "They fete cricketers as heroes one day, denounce the poor fellows as has-beens when they lose...how can they be so fickle?" she said heatedly. I agreed with her, but couldn't help feeling there was something more than cricket that riled her.

So I invited her to share my table. She sat down, and I noticed she had a letter clutched in her hands. I asked her where she was from. One thing led to another, and she decided to tell me her life story. Although it had a kind of positive outcome, I could see why she was so bugged about the fickleness of human attitudes.

Her name was Jeena, and she'd been born into a poor family in a remote tribal village in Jharkhand. The only thing that stood between her family and starvation was the kindness of the missionaries there. "Thanks to them, my two elder brothers and I were able to go to school and dream of a better life," she said. When she was old enough, her father decided to send her to Delhi to work. "Here again, I was lucky to find a church that encouraged me to study alongside," she recounted. After she finished school, Jeena studied nursing, got a job in a hospital, and began sending home a hefty salary.

"So I became the apple of everyone's eye," she said wryly, "from being a burden on my family, I had become their biggest breadwinner." When relatives commented on the folly of letting daughters in their twenties remain unmarried, Jeena's brothers always supported her decision to work in the city, saying they were proud of their hard-working younger sister. "I, in turn, was proud they were so progressive in their thinking," she said. Her brother used the money she sent to set up a little shop in their village. All was hunky dory till her family received an irresistible marriage proposal for Jeena.

Overnight, Jeena said, their attitude changed. "They called me every day from the village, telling me I should leave my job. It didn't do for an about-to-be married girl to work in the city, they said. My mother even said that the money I sent to them was like poison to them..." she recounted. Finally, fed up with the constant carping, Jeena quit her lucrative job and returned to her village.

The proposal flopped. Jeena was stuck. She had no job to go back to the city to, and little to do in her village. Then her younger brother's business packed up. Her family's attitude towards her changed yet again. "Why don't you see if you can get your old job back?" her brother asked, "it must be so boring for you here!" Even her mother lectured her on the necessity of being practical and the importance for women to be able to stand on their own two feet.

A slightly disillusioned Jeena returned to Delhi. "Call them flexible, call them fickle "" my mother and brother's attitudes towards my career depended on whether they needed extra cash, or not," she said matter-of-factly. She got her old job back, but decided to open her own bank account in Delhi instead of sending all her money home. "I decided to save for my own future," she explained, "I guess my own attitudes towards family responsibility have also changed now... and I feel so free!"