I think at the right time giving up is the thing to do. Accept defeat, lay down arms, kneel on life’s floor, to be the prisoner of war. POW. No, well that is too glorious and presumptuous. Simply put down the dreams and get on what is left of life. Since one cannot just lay down and die when one thinks the war is over, guess I would plod on in my own fashion.

Logic, cool rational thought is important and operative even at this stage. I can see why I could never win this battle from where I am, with the resources I have at my disposal, friendless, countryless, homeless, loveless – but not guilty of thoughtless action so far, or even misguided action.

I made a mistake expecting impossible things from the wrong people. Like expecting the YWCA warden to shelter me for a few weeks because I was already paid up there and she had taken me in only after she had chatted with me for over an hour.

I made a mistake in the logistics department. I overestimated my capacity I must admit. However, my indignation was not misplaced, my expectations were fair at all times and right and just and well within my rights. My strategy to fight back, was exactly along the routes that were available and open to me. The weapons I used were the only ones I had. I made the most of whatever little I had at my command. I did not take it lying down, did put up a fight.

So am not ashamed of my defeat or even apologizing.

Maybe that is what I would rate in a human being, because that is what they call spirit and sense and intelligence and spunk perhaps, the ability to finally see reason and give in, accept defeat. I lost the battle because I made mistakes, my resources were limited, but the war itself will continue somewhere with someone else I would like to hope. Young, single, financially independent urban women in India are a minority and a class by themselves, that majorly have to do things on their own. There is no social safety net except one's immediate family. I am not the majority voice here in India. Therefore I have not had the luxury of popular support or cursory sympathy or even empathy from educated individuals, unless of course you consider the generosity and kindness of someone important at work.

Most middle class educated women in India, sadly enough, do not even notice (or if they do, they choose to put up with it without a fight, taking their frustration and stress out in other ways. I remember a senior colleague that I love dearly and is my best friend and my most important and reliable sounding board for ideas, had said tearfully but quite firmly, "You are unmarried Nabina, you do not have a man to support you, you cannot raise your voice, you have to learn to be quiet because when you do raise your voice you call undue attention to yourself and expose yourself to danger and harm". Veena also works for Design for Change. But even she had felt scared and had warned me) the slights that loom large in my sight because of my upbringing, my training, my education, cultural background, family set-up and my religion.

Being a Hindu Indian woman brought up by these self assertive, well exposedto life Brahmo women and jedii like European Christian nuns does make a difference in what you expect of life and its people, or its failures and its successes. “Jaya taba bichitra anando, hey kabi, jayo tabo karuna…”.

My mother with her brothers and sisters in law went to the art school called Kalabhavan in Shantiniketan and studied under the master Nandalal Bose. She was soaked in the typical Shantiniketani spirit of "mukta chinta" (open mindedness) of Rabindranath Tagore, handed me a book by Vivekananda when I was eight years old even though I ate cornflakes and went to a convent run by Scandinavian nuns in a pool car – very Western you would think? No Sir, you came home to machh-bhaat, Bangla books, sarees, Rabindrasangeet and Hindu middle class lifestyle, eating with the family on the floor sitting on a piri (a very low wooden seat still seen in very traditional Bengali homes and in Bengali weddings even today), with my widowed Vaishnavite grandmother watching us from a slight distance, seated on a stool. Because she was a widow, she did not eat fish or meat or eggs or onions or garlic and she would not also touch us while we ate our meal but she would sit at a distance and chat with us and watch the family eat together as elders discussed important stuff. The children ate in silence with heads bowed trying to finish fast as possible so we could get away from the presence of the elders, back in bed with the Satyajit Ray detective or Professor Shanku sci-fi novel that was the current craze.

I was brought up in a certain way and I grew up with certain ideas and therefore I came to expect certain things as a matter of course and as a matter of right. I was also willing and raised to work hard and be responsible with those rights, and God knows I have been dutiful in every sphere of my life and fiercely loyal at all times.

I have always put my family first and even now I accept defeat because I put the family first. I do not respect their decision but I accept their attitude.

I needed to go to the US for at least once. For various reasons this trip was important for me. Partly for the sake of WERL our fledgling women’s empowerment org. Partly for my own training. Professional development, to meet and interact with my friends like minded people. Partly for my baby son. I have a godchild. I had wanted to go now before my boy grew too big and heavy to be picked up in my arms and before he developed a personality and became an adolescent, too shy to talk to a color-skinned Godmother or let her hug him. If I went now, we could have those endless conversations that only a child and a curious adult can have at magical moments, conversations that take you on amazing and fantastic journeys around the world through your little games giving you these wonderful insights into why things are, how things really work :). Children have fascinating minds. Every question they ask at this stage can give you a veritable vishwadarshan.

I did what everyone does: applied for a course, got through the preliminary interviews, I knew I would get admission but probably not a grant or a scholarship. But they promised work in the second year of my master’s program – not much but “something”. But I had to have the tuition for the first year Foreign student’s fees are triple that of the ordinary students in the US. I had to collect at least 24 thousand USD. In my currency that is close to 10 hundred thousand rupees.

I looked around for a loan since they would not could not reserve a seat until I showed them the financial proof. The banks at first said “you have a job, if you hadn’t…”

So I left my job and went back to them in December 2010. Then they said “we would need a guarantor – a tax paying guarantor, is there a father, brother, husband who would…”. No. I searched for other sources. While in the US and other first world countries they had grants and scholarships and partial grants and student loans for middle aged or simply women going back to school, there was nothing like that in my country. Most grants are for science students or doctoral or post doctoral fellows or young students under the age of thirty.

I continued to look and used this time to study for our org, I spent whole days studying websites of NGO INGO, their documents, I learned about the structure, the process of formation, registration laws rules of association of such groups, the difference between a society, trust and a section 25 company, different formats of memorandum or association of constitution, of member’s duties and responsibilities , about how such orgs are financed, about proposals, about various developmental orgs that work with such orgs, about government bodies that work with such orgs, about documentation processes, about drafting proposals, about fund raising, and about my society – I read and read and met people and we talked and spent the nights thinking, reading re-reading literature about women’s plight in my country, I read lots of history, economics – reports about who is doing what where and in what field and what were the impact and how effective they have been. I visited women’s orgs, launched Design for Change in Kolkata in the meanwhile – travelled to remote villages in and around West Bengal and observed schools, teachers at work, systems, resource use, resourcing, advocacy measures, and all kinds of stuff and we continuously talked about why women’s condition was the way it was in India.

And I started documenting the plight of single urban Indian women from various cities in India. I had started travelling the country way back in 1999. Every single summer and winter vacation, I travelled to a different part of my country, studying the people, our culture, schools, teaching learning systems. I started to travel and live and work at these places after my divorce. I left Kolkata my home, and set off for Maharashtra at first, then Delhi, Gujarat, Bangalore, Himachal, Goa….

At some point after December 2010, I realized I would have to get back to regular work as I had depleted all my resources while I was working for Ahmedabad. That was the lowest paid teacher’s job I have worked at in my entire career and after three years it was no longer possible to sustain myself and I had to look for other options.

When I met some wonderful people at Open Salon, I re- vamped and launched into concrete plans. My friends have all been every leg of the way with me so far I can proudly say. They pulled me up by the scruff of my neck when I fell, nursed me when I was wounded and are with me even now. Not all of them I can see or hear from daily – some work from behind the scenes and I never get to see them or hear from them. Some are there constantly with a kind word and resources and comforting word and hugs when I need them and letters too and advice and money.

I spent a very very hard year between 2010- 2011. Slept on floors, ate sometimes, did not eat often, worked but often did not get paid, was changing houses constantly for the better part of the time, lost money transitioning, through brokerage, deposit monies, salaries that never got paid etc. I never missed a deadline though, I never quit working or reading or smiling and I have never not shown up for work or failed my commitments.

To my family I requested for my share of the property when I realized no matter who I work for in India I would never make enough money in two years to get that tuition. They agreed in the beginning but later decided it was too selfish on my part to want to pursue individual dreams. They started by inviting me over for a deed signing and then my brother neglected to 'appear'. I returned with a draft of a deed that offers me the “bigger better share with the papers”. Is that good? No. This is India. There is a catch in that.

My mother is still alive. The "bigger better" she is entitled to while she is alive. So if that is what is given to me, I would not be able to sell or mortgage that in her lifetime (legally I could, morally, for ethical reasons I could not, because my brother lives separately and does not share responsibility for our mother). I would also be responsible for her if I accepted the papers. I would become the beck and call person of the family while the other part would get sold and whoever gets that walks away with the money and free to come back later for a share of the remainder. J

They extended date of joining class for me from November 2011 to September 2012. But I shall now never make that trip.

I know I shall now never set up that dream "good international standard primary school". India does not have good international standard primary schools. WERL would always be incomplete. The English project would never come through. I shall never complete my book. I shall never see my child. I shall never have a normal life. I shall never have a home because single women are expected to live in hostels or in paying guest accommodation. I shall never have lovely big warm dinners at my hearth with friends laughing and singing all the way to bed. I shall never have love or nightlong chats with close friends listening to the rain wash the mountains and forests outside or the sound of children waking up in the morning or any of the good things normal people enjoy in the civilized world. I realize now that am far from that dream red house with a white gate and rose bushes surrounded by a white wooden fence with great rhododendrons weighing over my door.

I do not think it is a sin I commit in giving up. I think I am gracefully accepting my fate, trying to deal with life the way it is, taking one day at a time, not expecting anything much...

Except maybe just a dash of impossible magic once in a while?