Such is Life!

Disclaimer: A long post.

I have been meaning to write this story for a while. It has been over a year that this happened, but I can still recall it well. I may not remember the details, but those details will not change the overall message.

I was going home after almost 2 years. However, it had not been long enough to make me forget the curse - that of sitting next to babies who cry the entire 20 hour flight back home. Hence, as I found myself sitting next to a young woman, I thanked my stars. However, it seems that I had thanked too soon, as I soon discovered that this young woman was also sobbing away to glory.

Not wanting to pry, I said nothing and began to read my book. She continued crying quietly, facing toward the window, in an attempt to conceal her despair. A good 30 minutes or so after we had been in the air, she wiped her tears, composed herself and said hello. As I saw her face, I saw nothing extraordinary. She was normal looking - there was nothing striking about her. Just another face in a sea of people. A face that I would forget as soon as I departed the plane.

We started talking about nothing in particular. Learned that she lived in Connecticut with her hubby and was going home to Calcutta. I was reading "The KiteRunner", and she said that she had been wanting to read it as well.

Soon they brought out drinks, and I asked for a beer, while she went for some white wine. As we got some more alcohol in our system, the conversation became a little more interesting. I learned that she used to work in the media industry in Delhi, and was recently married. I, as always, kept the discussion focused on her, revealing little besides frivolous details about myself.
As I jested with her that she could not even leave her husband for a few weeks without crying a bucket, she suddenly fell silent. Aware that I had touched a sensitive nerve, I apologized quickly. She said nothing, but I could see tears forming in her jet black eyes.

I kicked myself. She turned to the window again, but after a few minutes said that leaving her husband was not why she was crying. She said that it was due to her son. Over the course of the next hour, downing a few bottles of wine, she told me why she was crying.

When she was 20 years old, her parents had gotten her married. It was an arranged marriage. She had barely met the guy once. Her parents had decided that it was the right time for her, the guy was from a good family, and that was all that mattered. Things had been bad from the start. He was clearly not ready to get married yet. He was still in that phase where his only purpose was to have a good time. He spent the majority of his time hanging out with his friends while she twiddled her thumbs at home. Then they had a son.

It was the turning point of her life. She forgot all her grievances toward her life, and spent all her time caring for him. However, the responsibility of a child broke the camel's back, and her husband filed for divorce. She was only happy to get out the stifling marriage.

A couple years of staying at her parents' house drove her to desperation. She just could not spend her life living at her parent's place. She made the very difficult decision to leave her son behind with her parents, and moved to Delhi for work.

The change did her good. Although she terribly missed her son, the sense of achievement - her own apartment, a new car - helped heal some of the scars. One night at a friend's birthday party, she met this guy and romance blossomed. He worked overseas, and was gone after two weeks, but their relationship continued on the phone. She knew that the next step, a.k.a marriage full of perils - not only was she a divorcee, she also had a son. A divorce is still a taboo in India, and a child from a previous marriage only adds to it.

However, her worries were unneeded as he proposed to her after a few months of meeting her. His parents had been against it, and still were, but he had decided to follow his heart. At last, it seemed that things were finally heading in the right direction.

However, life had another unpleasant surprise for her. Her ex-husband had filed a petition in the court preventing her from taking the boy out of the country. It was not out of love, as in the past two years, he had barely seen his son (who was still staying with her mother) two times. It was out of pure spite - she had moved on in life, and he had not. He wanted to hurt her, and he had decided to do it in the nastiest way possible.

She had moved to the US with her husband, and was now engaged in a court battle to get her son to his new family. She had been back to India three times in the past one year, and each time the case had gotten murkier and murkier. The only saving grace was her new husband, who was determined to stand by her through it all.

The money and the emotional pain aside, her life in the US had been at a standstill. She had not started working, as she did not know when the court would schedule a hearing and she would have to rush back home. She was going home for yet another court hearing, and the hopelessness of the situation had overwhelmed her.

On one hand, was her new husband, who had been patient and understanding through all this, and on the other, was the man in her life, who refused to let her be happy. Such is life.

I don't know why she shared that story with me. To me it was a very personal story, and not something you would share with someone you met on a plane. I took her number, but forgot all about her in the excitement of going home. I don't even remember her face, or her name. But I hope that things will turn out right for her.