I- Identity

Recently, I met a girl who goes door to door to give salon services to people right at their home, trying to meet her ends meet. The pricing of her products is way cheaper than you can ever expect but the work she does is beyond excellent!

Getting your arms and legs waxed at as low as 200 bucks! What, is it 1990 or something?

Yup that’s true and now you can close your wide open mouth!

She’s married right now but didn’t stop with her work. There was a lot of hassle that her family had to face in getting her married. Why you wonder? A couple of reasons there are.

One, she is black! And by black, I mean a shade just lighter than hair. Two, she has a big scar on her face because of an accident she met when she was a child. And it hasn’t healed as yet. Enough reasons to not get tied, right?

After stuffing tons of dowry, she finally got married. Like every one of us, she too had lots of dreams. She wasn’t very fond of her work and thought of quitting it after marriage.

Source

But fate had different plans for her. Her husband made good money but didn’t give her a single penny. And on top of that, she couldn’t produce children. Her in-laws kept saying bitter things to her every now and then and once tried to burn her as well, for she wasn’t good looking, she had scars and now she couldn’t give them their heir! Basically, she was good for nothing in their family and there was no use of her in the house.

She couldn’t go back to her parents. They wouldn’t take her. She didn’t have the audacity to leave her husband.

With a lot of courage, she decided to start the parlor services by going door to door, so that she could have something in her pocket. But there too, she couldn’t try her luck much! Even after being a pro, not many people wanted to get the services done by her because of the way she looked! What will others think? What kind of people do we call in our houses? The ladies of the society, what will they make out of us if they come to know about it? And so on...

That was the reason behind charging peanuts from her customers. At least, in the lure of cheap services, they would give her some work!

It took a really long time in the neighborhood to accept the way she was.

But because her work was good, she kind of survived and now keeps busy all day. She leaves her house at 11 in the morning and comes home at 9. She has a new identity now. An identity she created for herself.

Anyone who wanted to call her would ask in the neighborhood for the ‘ugly, black parlor girl, one who provides services at cheaper prices’!

And she didn’t mind any of it for she was getting work and that is what mattered!

And there I was, so much pinched, filled with so much agony about how shallow have we become as humans! I saw her struggle, I saw her commitment, beyond the color and the scar, I saw the desire in her to make a good life and for that, she was willing to go any level. But none of that helped. Because most of her clients couldn’t look beyond her skin tone!

We only see what is shown and never look beyond that. We only think about ourselves and crib if things don’t work our way. So much blessed we are for the kind of life we have and still we don’t feel happy! I read this somewhere and it makes so much sense, that I’d like to share it here.

‘People were meant to be loved and things were meant to be used. We live in times where things are being loved and people are being used!’

Can you resonate with this post? Tell me more about it!

Cheers

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This A to Z Challenge, season I’m going to give you a ride and take you to all the places untouched! My theme this year is ‘Let’s see the other Side’, where I’ll be sharing about the daily nuances that we’ve been seeing in the same way since 1990’s! (:P) But this time you’re going to ponder over it a bit differently.

Stay tuned to find out what's more in store!