Till the age of sixteen i was with my parents. Then after marriage settled at my husband's house. Being the first daughter-in-law of the house, I had much more responsibilities and more expectations from me. It was a very difficult job of balancing between responsibilities and expectations. They were very long days and hardly any time to think of anything else than dometic chorus.
Life was going on. We became parents of three children. Though we are not that educated, we gave them education as much we could afford. More than anything we trained them to live a life based on values.
Time ticked fast. The family tree grew and now i have little cute great grand children. Not much work to do at home. Ten years back, when I was 68, I was looking for a hobby. I have seen my papa writing in our mother tongue konkani, and preparing a hand-written magazine and distributing it among few konkani people. Those magazines changed from hand-to-hand and more people read them.
It is more than 50 years after my marriage. I have lot of free time. Nothing much to do. My son encouraged me to write something for a konkani magazine just started publishing in 1998. First I wrote a very short story and sent to the editor, requesting to publish. The readers accepted it. Then I started writing regularly. Now ten years passed. I got some awards for my writing. But my interest was to get a place in reader's heart.
Last month I attended a function celebrating tenth anniversary of the konkani magazine. They gave me two awards . My first novel in konkani also got released in that function. I was sitting in the audience and watching the program. On my way out, a middle-aged woman came to me with respect glittering in her eyes. She touched my feet as a gesture of respect and spoke to me about how she liked reading my stories and valued the morals in my stories. She came to the function just to see me and if possible, convey her appreciation and respect. When I came to know that she was just discharged from hospital and came all the way to meet me, I didn't know how to respond. I lost searching for words.
I had no words to express at that moment. No award can give me such a satisfaction, and I consider those gestures and words from that woman as the best award for my writing.
