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I knew a very elegant lady in Mumbai, Shanti, who seemed to the world to be the mistress of all she surveyed. She was given this advice by her doctor. "Stand at the highway every afternoon and....SCREAM!" Do I hear you say, "And what was that for? Sounds bizzare!" Well, she was depressed. Profoundly so.

Very conscious of her cultured background, she had never let even irritation show in her eyes,leave alone a harsh word passing through her lips. Control; Control; Until one day she was ready to burst! But did she take her doctor's advice? "No,what will people think?" A common enough refrain for women in our society...

Shanti was a very good and dutiful daughter. She remembered her father's death. The shame and outrage she felt when her mother,widely acknowledged as one of the most beautiful women in princely India, was made to remove each piece of jewellery in a special ceremony. The horror, when her mother quietly subjected to her hair being shorn off. The barber's hands trembling that he was doing this, to the royal mother_ the mother who until then was the symbol of 'Lakshmi', soon to become a symbol of inauspiciousness.

Shanti remembered herself as a young bride. The internalised pressures and expectations to be judged as a good daughter-in-law. Her eagerness to learn the ways of her new family;her eagerness to please by following traditions religiously;her diplomacy in dealing with the egos and relationships of the extended family. It soon endeared her and later made her invaluable.

For history, soon played her part! Her husband, marginalised and ill-equipped for a new reality, started turning increasingly to drink. The once proud family, had to witness daily, the humiliating spectacle of their favourite son abusing his wife in alcoholic stupor. Shanti understood and supported the forces of change sweeping across her land. Just as she understood and forgave her husband's daily indiscretions. She prayed for strength. She prayed for wisdom. She was rewarded. Her son, a talented cricketer, had found a vocation in playing for his country.

This should have been her moment. When she could bask in the glow of achievement. For steering her family to find its place under the new sun; steering her people, specially the women towards education and employment in the cottage sector. But that was not to be! Her son had adjusted perhaps too well to the new order. For barely a few years later, he was named in a match-fixing scandal that rocked the entire cricketing world. His 'whites', now forever tainted.

"God, you tested me; I accepted each test as your will and carried my duty. I did not blame you. You showed me the way and I followed your light.

Then why have I FAILED? WHY?...!"

She could SC-RE-A-AM! Only no noise would come out. She sat there. Quiet. Spent. Exhausted. Her future riven by disease!

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