I’m about 33 years old now, but I still haven’t lost my childlike nature. Why that is, even I don’t know. I still really love to play and run around, but I just don’t have time. I have big dreams, but not about dressing up or focusing on what I wear or how I look. My dream is different—to help others. If someone needs something, I want to be there for them. Whether it’s cooking a meal or helping with some work, I want to be able to do it.
Originally, my dream was to have a bicycle so I could travel anywhere for work without spending money on transportation. So I learned how to ride a bike and bought one. Then I learned how to ride a scooter. A friend had a scooter that he lent to me. He once said, “Mona, pray to your God that I get this particular job. If your God grants it, I’ll gift you a new scooter.” So I prayed to God, and he got that job. Once his job was confirmed, he said, “Alright, then take it.” I told my sister and daughter, “Let’s see what God does.” And truly, God helped, and he was ready to give me a scooter as well. But I refused, saying, “No, it’s fine. I can manage with your scooter.” He did teach me how to ride it. After teaching me, sometimes he let me use it for commuting.
Now my dream is to learn how to drive a car. But how will that happen? It’s a bit bigger dream than my situation usually allows. Even a scooter was beyond my means, but that worked out—so maybe this one will, too. When I first got married and came to live with my in-laws, I had no clue about anything—just that I was married and had to stay there. I put up with everything because we were six sisters at home, and I didn’t get much affection from my family. Even now, nobody is that close to me—nobody checks how I’m doing. Sometimes I might call them, but they never call me unless they need something. Whatever life I’m living, I mostly share it with God, because that’s how I feel. I don’t perform elaborate worship—I just bathe in the morning, light an incense stick, and that makes me feel good.
All this time, I’ve never asked God for anything—not money, not a job. Whenever I face a challenge, I just ask, “Oh God, please stay with me and stand by me.” Saying just that makes me feel like I’m going to get everything I need. Even if I can’t sleep at night, I say, “Oh God, please help me sleep,” and then I do. It feels like He’s always there for me.
I used to work at a regular job, but for about four years now, I’ve been working in a residential society and also doing cooking. I work from 5:30 in the morning until 9:30 at night, with a two-hour break. I used to work 7-to-7 at a company, but I quit because the pay was limited—no matter how much you work, it’s still just 8 or 10 hours’ worth of wages. In my current work at the society, the more I work, the more I can earn.
One difficulty I ran into is that I want to buy a house for myself, but I haven’t been able to because the bank won’t give me a loan. I actually cried about it, saying, “I have enough money, but I can’t get the loan approved, so I can’t fulfill my dream of owning a home.” Now there’s talk of buying that house in the name of “Ashish Jain.” He’ll purchase it, and when I have enough money, I can transfer it to my name. But who knows—when the value of the house goes up, whether he’d hand it over? Maybe only God would do that kind of favor. I haven’t seen humans do that sort of thing. If it did happen, he’d be God to me.
Everything was going fine. I was working, everything was settled. Suddenly, my older brother-in-law died in an accident. Everyone else managed to go see the family, but I couldn’t, because I live alone and work. Two days later, I caught a train. Since I couldn’t get time off, I quit my job and left. My husband kept calling, asking, “When are you coming?” Right when I was about to arrive, he called and said, “Don’t come.” I asked, “Why?” He said, “Everyone’s saying that if you’re not living with your husband, why come here?” That’s how it is—meanwhile, I still send money to my husband, cover all my child’s expenses, and am expected to live with them. I don’t know what kind of family I married into. My own family is strange, too—they don’t give me anything, nor does my husband have the capacity to earn. Their thinking (and my family’s thinking too) is, “You should just live in the village, eat whatever’s there, and let your kids get by however.” I don’t like that at all.
So that’s how my life’s going. Now I’m on my way to the village. What should I do, how do I protect my dignity? Because I took leave under the pretense that there was some issue, so I can’t go back there (to my old job). So I won’t actually go to the village but stay somewhere else, in Dehri maybe, and leave in a few days. I finally arrived at the village, and everything was normal. There’s one of my uncle’s daughters-in-law who is very arrogant and cunning—always gossiping about me here and there. She’s not a nice person, and she’s full of pride, always finding faults. I have no idea how people like that manage in life—maybe God stands by them too. She’s so spiteful that she knows exactly how to badmouth someone.
But I leave it to God. I trust God completely. I just need to get through a day or two somehow. “Oh God, protect me—everything is in your hands.” I stayed there for four days, and it was okay. Everyone kept saying, “Stay with your husband.” But how do I explain why I don’t stay with him? I just say, “I can’t; I have no choice. He’s better off at home—he does no work outside, and he gets meals there. If I stay with him and something goes wrong, I’ll be blamed—I’m already looked down on for working alone. People don’t believe I live by myself. I’m still young, so they wonder how I manage.”
Nobody knows that even if I lived with him, I wouldn’t do much. I ended up with two kids, but I don’t even know how it happened—just that it did. Love and “just getting by” are very different things. If it were truly love, maybe the kids wouldn’t have been born under such pressure. “Society” just says, “You have to do this,” and in the process, kids happened. I have no clue what “feeling” or “husband’s love” is. My parents married me off, and I tried hard to fix the situation, but eventually, when it didn’t work, I left everyone’s judgments behind and focused on my job. Now I’m so busy with work that I have no time to overthink.
People don’t believe I live alone because I’m always cheerful. I love making videos, so I make them. People think, “We don’t know where she stays or how she lives so nicely,” and they jump to the wrong conclusions. They don’t consider that I might be working hard, so I can live comfortably. They assume, “She must be living with someone, there has to be someone else.” They only see it negatively. It used to bother me a lot, but now I don’t care at all.
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