Self reliance

She came to Vivek Chetana in search of a job. A young widow with a teenage daughter she was in great distress. She did not have her academic certificates with her . Her now dead husband had destroyed the documents one day in a fit of rage. She had endured great physical and mental torture ever since she was married. Her husband was a typical loser . He used to beat her regularly . She suffered silently for years . She finally picked up the courage to leave him. He took his life immediately afterwards.


Now she was surviving by coaching students. All her hopes now rested with her daughter. She wanted her daughter to complete her graduation and then find a job. I realized she had stopped thinking about herself as an individual with a life of her own. From her husband her hopes had now moved to her daughter. She got a lot of pragmatic counseling from the ladies at VC. She was advised not to burden her daughter with her personal miseries. As a mother she had to do her duty first .So it was necessary for her to look for solutions for herself first and not to shift the responsibility on someone else. I hope she understood what the ladies meant by advising her to be self-reliant first.

I really felt bad for her. I am sure she had become used to hearing such advice now that she was  moving around the city seeking help from every possible source . But sometimes when the mind is too burdened it does help to see things from the other side.