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The nowhere women
Many young wives experience depression and a sense of alienation when they follow their husbands abroad for a better life
‘In Mumbai, my work at a publishing house used to keep me on my toes all day. And whatever free time I was able to manage was spent with friends and family,’ recalls Reshu Sinha, 29. These days, her entire life revolves around various social networking sites and Skype. This once-busy professional came to Leamington Spa in Warwickshire, after marrying an IT professional a short while ago. Initially, she was happy at the thought of discovering the 18th-century spa town with its Georgian architecture and the famous royal baths. But her enthusiasm died down soon. “I explored the beautiful city and continue to do so, but doing everything alone is no fun... I feel so lonely,” she says, her voice heavy with sadness. Her husband was busy with his professional commitments, but Sinha had a lot of time on her hands and decided to get back into the workforce. This was easier said than done. “I did manage to find a sandwich artis’s job at a local eatery, but there is no mental stimulation there,” she says. She may yearn for those days filled with office work and the chatter of old friends, but has managed to maintain a happy façade for the world, preferring not to share her woes. She says, dejectedly,“This is how it's going to be so why bother them?” “My friends think I am having a good time here while they are working hard. I post the happiest pictures I have on social networking sites so people assume I am blessed. Only I know the truth,” she says. Spouses or sponsored dependants, who cannot find work in a foreign land, irrespective of their qualifications or experience, are facing desperate times. Take the case of Shruti Agarwal, 34, a chartered accountant from New Delhi. Leaving behind a well-paid career, she arrived in Saudi Arabia where her husband had landed a lucrative job with the national airline. To her dismay she found out that the Kingdom does not allow women entering as dependants to work and that one, in any case, had to be fluent in Arabic to be able to find work. She decided to change her plan. “I thought I would now be able to do all those things I had no time for in India. I decided I would join a gym, but then that year the Kingdom banned gyms for women. I tried to socialise with my neighbours but here people are culturally different and do not interact beyond their families. There are big shopping malls here but women are not allowed to go out alone. I do not have friends or family beyond my own,” she explains. Slowly but steadily, Agarwal started experiencing feelings of worthlessness. “I felt redundant and despised my husband because he had friends and an office to go to. I cried every day, I felt sad for months at a stretch,” she says. If Sinha is fighting loneliness, then Agarwal is waging a battle with depression. Pavitra Singh, a public relations expert from Chennai, has a pretty similar story to narrate. “I was doing extremely well in my profession. But then my husband got a job in the US. Of course, we moved and I am now sitting at home,” she says. She has contemplated going back but knows that professionally things will not be the same. “A few months out of the circle and you are out of it,” she rues. Sinha, Agarwal and Singh represent thousands of women who move around the world as secondary migrants, giving up their careers and aspirations. Their husband have “good jobs” but the emancipated, confident wives are forced to play the the role of a homemaker, even if they have the capability to do something more with their lives. Do they ever get back to work or do their family duties get the better of them? How do they feel as dependents in a foreign country? Says Agarwal, “It is extremely frustrating to be reliant on your husband for even the smallest of things.” As Saudi Arabia does not allow women to move outside without being escorted by a male family member, it gets very tough at times. For Singh, it’s her financial independence she misses the most. “I am lucky that my husband is extremely nice. But at the end of the day, I have to ask for things. Earlier, I could just get anything on my own,” she says. Take Sinha, from being a publishing professional she was reduced to making sandwiches, an occupation she found both boring and demeaning. At times, hard-won degrees are not recognised, or painfully gathered skills are considered outdated. Few brave ones carve out a separate existence. Payal, a south Mumbai girl with a Masters in Dentistry from Singapore, joined her husband in Riyadh soon after marriage. Her husband, a victim of recession, had migrated in search of a good job. As soon as she landed a job, she packed her bags and moved. Payal realised that she was not enjoying her work and it was only her sense of loyalty to her husband that kept her going. However, a point came when she could not take it anymore. She packed her bags once again and headed for Mumbai, “back to what was normal for me rather than trying to fit in where everything is so different”. These days, Payal is a happy woman, “I love being in my city. I am as qualified as my husband, if not more. If he gets to choose where he wants to be, I too should be given an opportunity to decide, shouldn't I?” While Payal’s stance seems rational enough, many would term it as impractical. The question then is, do women exercise their freedom of choice and follow their hearts, or do they simply tow the line and suffer in silence like Sinha, Agarwal and Singh? Also, is there anything like a happy compromise?
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