Certificate The fan moved slowly overhead, stirring the hot, humid air. It was the month of May, and Mumbai sighed under the oppressive weight of its sultry weather. I was sitting on an uncomfortably hard plastic chair in a crowded room in Mumbai. It was the last day of my intensive Yoga course, and the certificates were being awarded. The institute conducted two courses simultaneously, one in Hindi and one in English. Both the courses were one month long and consisted of both theory as well as actual practice of the asanas. There were some 60 participants. A bunch of us were attending the function not because of the certificates, but because we were presenting a small cultural program later. The program moved at an excruciatingly slow pace. A guest was making a long, rambling speech in very correct, textbook Hindi, and our group was getting restive. Two rows ahead of us, sat a young woman dressed in a bright red and green synthetic sari with a faux bandhani print. There were coloured sequins all over her sari that shone gaudily, every time she moved her position. ‘She looks like a moving Christmas tree’, sneered a friend, a trifle cattily. ‘Yeah, looks like she lost her way to the sets of Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi’, remarked another girl. We all laughed. The woman however, was blissfully unaware of the barbs directed at her. She was leaning forwarding her chair, eagerly listening to the speech and nodding periodically. Mercifully, the speech eventually ended and the anchor started with the presentation of the certificates. The Hindi group was the first. ‘Shobhadevi’, announced the anchor. The woman in the red and green sari started walking towards the stage. Her anklets sounded unusually loud in the quiet room. She accepted her certificate. There was a round of feeble, half-hearted applause as we awaited the next person’s name to be announced. However, instead of walking back to her chair, Shobha walked to the rostrum and said something to the announcer. ‘Shobha wants to share something with us today’, said the announcer. We all groaned inwardly, as Shobha stood behind the rostrum. Her glass bangled tinkled frantically as she gripped the sides of the rostrum hard with her hands. She began to speak, in a timid, hesitant voice, in a slightly UP accented Hindi. ‘Aaj mujhe yahan ye certificate mila. Yeh meri zindagi ka pehla certificate hai. Isse pehle mujhe koi pramanpatra nahi mila.’ (Today, I received this certificate. This is the first ever certificate of my life.) She paused for a moment, her voice tinged with emotion, as the audience got the full meaning of her words. There was a stunned silence for a few moments, before the hall erupted in a simultaneous applause. Shobha continued her speech. Born and raised in a small village in eastern UP, she had dropped out of school after failing seventh grade three times. Her parents had arranged her marriage to a boy from a nearby village when she was 17. Shobha’s husband worked as a barber at a hair-cutting saloon in Bhayandar, a suburb of Mumbai. Shobha had relocated to Mumbai after marriage and had delivered a baby girl at 19. She lived with her family in a small room with a tin roof somewhere near Bhayandar station. Her husband worked at a nearby hair-cutting saloon. Shobha told us that it was her husband who had made her do the Yoga course. He had got all the information, filled out her forms, paid her fees and had practically forced her to do the course. It was a full-time course, and lectures ran from 7 in the morning to 7 in the evening. For that whole month, Shobha’s husband has assumed full responsibility of running the house and looking after their daughter. They would both wake up at four. He would fill the water and wash the clothes while she would cook for the day. He would then pick up the sleeping daughter and traveled with his wife all the way to Santacruz because she was not confident of traveling alone. After dropping Shobha off at the course, he would return, drop the daughter at her Balwadi and go to work. He would later pick the daughter up from school and take her to the saloon, where he and his colleagues would look after her for the rest of the day. In the evening, he travelled with his daughter all the way to Santacruz to pick Shobha up. They would then shop for the groceries and return home exhausted. The course was not easy for Shobha. She was not used to reading for a long time or taking notes. She had lost the habit of learning. The commute was hard, the hours were long and she missed her daughter acutely. Every day, she would cry and beg her husband to allow her to give up the course. But he always managed to persuade her to continue. He cajoled her, encouraged her, even scolded her at times, but he did not allow her to give up. ‘Pehli baar maine zindagi me koi padhai poori ki hai, inki vajahase’, Shobha said, her voice quivering with emotion. When she ended her speech, we were all stunned, and deeply ashamed of our unkind comments. The entire hall clapped for Shobha, as she stepped down the stage. But instead of returning to her seat, she walked straight to the back of the room. We all craned our necks to see where she was going. She walked straight to a slight young man cradling a baby girl in his lap and sitting in the last row. As Shobha’s daughter fell eagerly into her waiting arms, her husband took the certificate from her and looked at it with wonder in his eyes. After all, that certificate belonged to him, as much as it belonged to Shobha! - Shefali Vaidya
Posted on: Sat, 14 Jun 2014 07:14:58 +0000
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