march 15 - 31, 2002 issue



countless women are pushing their horizons. are you?
t was a small shop, but well laid out. clothes hung neatly on hangers, and racks held lines of folded garments, each beckoning - by its colour and texture - to be examined more closely. bouquets and flower arrangements spoke of the fact that the shop had been opened only that day, and the owner stood nervously behind the table, waiting for customers to walk in.
dressed nattily in a soft 'chikankari salwar-kurta', she was quite an advertisement for her store's wares. as we walked in, a tray of drinks in glasses was brought up, the drinks matched the soft colours of the clothes, and had the same translucence as the georgettes and voiles.
it was an opening to match any other ambitious beginning, but for salima, it was a new horizon. and a long way from the time when she first set out to chart the unknown path of retailing, when, armed with a carry bag full of clothes that she had got from lucknow, she would go house to house, hoping to sell.
perhaps it was her persuasiveness, or just the quality of her merchandise, and the fact that she soon discovered she could sell better if she exchanged her t-shirts for well-cut 'chikan' suits, but her progress, though slow, was remarkably smooth. before long, she was selling more pricey stuff, and finding buyers, and then there was the shop - in less than three years since she started. and despite familial setbacks that literally left her the sole provider for her family.
with fortitude
prabha's is a similar story. just about a year ago, her husband died of a painful galloping cancer. leaving her with a daughter to provide for, and no skills to supplement her meagre school education. prabha realised that the money she earned from doing housework would not be enough any more.
eking time out of her choc-a-bloc day, she managed to train at a beauty salon for six months and earned a diploma for her efforts. she then set out to provide home services for women in the colony she worked in. she soon gained a word-of-mouth reputation for being gentle, and polite and efficient, besides costing her clients much less for services rendered in the comfort of their home, at their convenience.
and when the only beauty parlour in the colony, run by a young, self-made enterprising resident, closed down because of the girl's impending marriage, prabha seemed ready to come into her own. and probably will.
more credit to her, as she uses the money to educate her child in private schools, and hopes to break her away from the chores of servitude.
surviving and soaring
and then, there is the story of m. who prefers to remain unnamed. when she married a man of her choice, she was bright and bubbly, an all-rounder who felt the world was her oyster. when she walked out of the marriage, she had been scarred badly by layers of self effacement forced upon her, and had grown a shell of diffidence and uncertainty that made her quite a different person, except to those who could look beyond the apparent persona.
but gathering her courage, she first took up a job that, despite her being in her 30s, gave her much satisfaction and helped her to grow fast enough to consider setting up a base of her own. teething troubles over, m is now well on her way to success and is considering setting up an ancillary unit to help process those jobs that her first unit cannot handle.
it has brought her monetary independence of course, and social status, but more importantly, has restored the breeziness and self confidence that was a part of her mental make-up.
salutations
three women who, despite being from different strata of society, have a common bond of grit and belief in themselves. and have crossed the border into self realisation. they are the symbol of the indian spirit.
femina salutes their never-say-die spirit.
editor, sathya saran
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