A debt I was unaware of

For the past weeks, since the diagnosis of Ranjan's cancer I have been spending a lot of what would be called 'alone' time and found myself looking back at the 39 years Ranjan and I spent together. Somehow this turned out to be a selective walk down memory alone, as all the so called difficult moments vanished or at least made themselves so tiny that they became invisible.

It is in these stolen moments, that I came to realise what Ranjan means to me and how he made every single wish, dream and even idiosyncrasy of mine possible. I stand guilty of having taken all this for granted. In hindsight I realise that every success of mine was seeded by him. He stood by me in my career choices never standing in their way even though some were quite inane. Anyone glancing thorugh my bio data would realise that I am a bit of a rolling stone. My first job was a midnight one at the radio station, something not quite appropriate for a married lady 40 years back. But worse was to come. After a seemingly quiet and sedate period as Assistant Professor at JNU and the IAS story played to please a demanding mom who always looked in me for her dead son, it is he who introduced me to the senior bureaucrat who would transform my career path for some years. One conference for the Young Congress set me on a semi political course and as a  conference organiser. Midnight became several nights be it Asian Games or Non Aligned summits. I was barely home. I was convinced I was the ultimate emancipated woman who led her life the way she wanted!

Today I realise that I could have done none of all that without the quiet and strong support of my life partner who had to put up with a so called modern woman. Today I know he did all that out of love. I was told much later how proud he was of me. I wish he had said it to me but Ranjan is a man of few words when it comes to emotions.

If project why exists it is again because Ranjan not only did not stand in the way but nudged me gently to live this dream. He was always there when I needed him and never complained when I took the house over for some extravagant folly like making soap out of Pongamia seeds or bringing hordes of slum kids to the house. He may have grumbled a bit, but I would have screamed has the roles been reversed.

Today I am taking time off from Project Why and I am doing so without guilt. Because I have come to my senses and realised that if not for Ranjan nothing would have been possible. There is a huge debt to pay, a debt I was unaware of, a debt I would have never been asked to repay had things been the way I wished.

For the next months, till he is back to his old self, I will do all in my power to make things better than the best for him, and try and repay a tiny bit of the debt I owe him.