Freedom Of Choice And Respect

Saturdays With Shivani

I often hear from people that for all my talk on feminism, it’s I who had to leave my job and put my career at risk when my husband got an opportunity to relocate outside India. These are usually people who don’t know me too well and I haven’t really given them the satisfaction of an answer.

Today I shall attempt to; not to satiate anyone’s curiosity but merely to state some facts about how it works for me. My husband and I both are doctors who started out together in our careers when life and its little businesses caught up with us. Post M.D. I wanted a child and my husband tried his best to dissuade me finally leaving it to me. After much deliberation, we had one and I have never regretted it to this day. It involved taking a step back, going on a maternity leave and take up a part time job till my daughter was old enough for me to go back full time.

Since these were my choices and my decisions and no one coerced me into them, I was prepared for the consequences. I never harboured any illusions of sacrifice or sainthood.

When the time came to take a call on moving outside India for my husband’s job, we were undecided. The opportunity was good but it also meant that I would have to give up my job. Since my job was at stake the decision had to be mine too. We moved out and though I had hoped that things would work out, they didn’t. I miss work and wonder how the years ahead would unfold but even in moments of deepest despair I am fully aware that the consequences are for me to bear.

Had either of these decisions brazenly imposed on me I would not have been able to handle what followed. The freedom of choice, irrespective of consequences, endowed me with a sense of empowerment that is difficult to explain to those who are not in my shoes. That empowerment in fact has enabled me to accept my situation and look at the proverbial silver lining. My writing, my books and now my art is a direct result of that. I didn’t sit and stare at the closed doors because I knew I had closed them. That is what freedom of choice does to an individual.

Then there is another important aspect to our marriage- respect. I might have overlooked it because for me any relationship involves respecting the other person; it’s a given. A few months ago, one of my friends, a doctor herself, asked me how easy it was for me to give up my job in India and move out. While we talked, she made a statement that shall remain imprinted on my mind. She said, “You will be respected even if you leave your job. Not all of us have that luxury.”

This hit me hard and shut me up for a while and that’s what I should do now. All I ask is, if freedom of choice and respect too much to ask for in 2021?

–Dr. Shivani Salil