WHAT IS FREEDOM FOR ME?
Pooja Dixit
I am a Commerce graduate from Mumbai University. I have worked for 9 years in the service industry before motherhood came calling. I am a proud mother of a teenager, and a homemaker.
Since we celebrated Independence Day a few days back, I am thankful that this topic is being discussed.
This makes the reader enter the article through the writer's personal perspective.
Since we celebrated Independence Day a few days back, I am thankful that this topic is being discussed.
What is freedom for me?
Being a homemaker, freedom for me is simple. It is when I don’t have any pending chores at home.
Or when I am done with the chores for a particular day, as everyone will agree, there is perpetual work at home.
Dishes get dirty again and again, clothes have to be packed into the washing machine forever, dust in Mumbai keeps accumulating, stomachs keep getting hungry as well.
The list is as perpetual as the chores themselves. Anyway, these problems are of a homemaker.
I am sure the same may be true of a person in service or business as well.
Freedom for a person in service may be to enjoy a holiday away from work, or for a businessman to be away from all the risk taking and decision making.
Then what is freedom?
Is freedom related to the past, at all times? Is tomorrow’s freedom dictated by today’s turmoil? Then why isn’t freedom revisited, its basis being today?
For our freedom fighters, freedom would have meant freedom of speech, freedom of expression, right to live, etc. which is enshrined in our Constitution.
After Independence was achieved, what does freedom mean to us, the basic rights of expression, speech etc. having been achieved?
As a Hindu, is freedom being able to pray to any God, to go to any temple, or to take part in any religious gathering?
As a lady, is freedom feeling safe wherever I go, irrespective of the time?
As a human being, freedom is being able to walk around safely, being able to breathe pure air, get pure drinking water, and being able to eat good food when hungry.
In achieving this freedom, is it okay if someone else’s freedom is getting disturbed?
Like, can I have loudspeakers in any religious gathering, or can I keep my surroundings clean while pushing the garbage outside?
Freedom goes hand in hand with duties, one cannot survive without the other. Can we achieve freedom for ourselves as a nation, by having different goals?
All freedom fighters had a common goal, either through violence or nonviolence, to send the Britishers out of India.
What goals do we have as a nation now, or do we have individual goals and we think that they will add up somehow?
I think it is important to redefine, to revisit, to change constantly. Form a group for a common goal, abolish it when a goal is achieved, and then start from scratch again, constantly coming together for common goals.
So, as I brace myself for yet another day of chores, I constantly remind myself there is more to life.
Freedom for me is freedom in all aspects, in all respects.
Being a homemaker is just one aspect of life, life is more, ever changing, ever surviving, ever adapting.
Maybe the joy is in the process and not in the end, when a new process is to be started.
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