happiness comes from where we look for it

She and I are set apart by the freedom of choice. It is an observation that startles me, made in her broken English, as she crouches over the two-burner gas stove on the floor in the corner of the room.

Her belly, swollen by her first baby, is starting to get in the way as she leans forward in her crouch, rolling out endless chapattis every meal. Alternating between rolling the dough and tossing it onto the pan, she ushers them fresh off the stove into the next room for the men to eat with their meal, returning just in time to remove the next expertly cooked round-of-bread from the pan.

She did not get to choose the path her life would follow. Her parents arranged her marriage, less than a year ago, to the eldest son of the family she is now a part of. For me, that life seems unimaginable. We are the same age, yet our lives and our worlds could not place us further apart.

As she sits beside me, her wedding album spread across our laps, I ask her if she’d been afraid. I see her, dressed as the sparkling bride, dance across the pages like a Bollywood star –but I cannot fathom how she must have felt having her life forever tied to another’s, whose face she had not even seen. “No afraid; excitement!” she answers, laughing at me and what I think she thinks is my naivety. She sees that I do not understand, though she does not understand why. It is our culture. My world has taught me to be independent and not to allow others to define me; the life of a woman in her world sees no independence from her male counterparts. For her, a marriage symbolised growing up. She tells me that she could not wait for her marriage, for a husband.

Whispering, she begins conspiratorially recounting to me the joys of her wedding night. As she talks, she blissfully relives the ecstasy of that happy time, devouring it quickly like an illicit treat; the forbidden pleasure playing out before me. As her vivacity folds me into her world, I am touched that she feels able to share her stories with me.

“Indian woman no choose. Life is wife. But is happy life,” she declares. As I sit for many days and watch, I see that it is. For her, freedom of choice is only a valuable commodity if she believes it so. While she knows she did not have the luxury of choice, she does not want it. Her happiness stems from being happy with what she has. When you have so little, objects are immaterial. You place value upon human connection and love –perhaps this is where we should all place our value.