CHENNAI:Three years and two months ago, when she received her M Tech certificate, Sobana had lost her husband to cancer. She was 39, and their daughter only 14. Sobana realised how she had to be not just a mother, but also a father to her daughter. “I kept thinking how to bring up our daughter Mira,” she says. Sobana had nurtured dreams of becoming a professor, but when she got married in 1997, she only had a diploma in Electronics and Telecommunication. “I wasn’t financially strong to continue my studies at that time,” she recalls. She joined BE at a reputed college, and just as she was about to complete it, her husband Bashyam was diagnosed with oral cancer in 2010. Three years later he died, on the day she received her Masters certificate. “There was frustration and stress in my daughter. I had to handle all that single-handedly. What I miss the most now is the joy of sharing certain things that I could share only with my husband. But I did succeed in bringing my daughter out of the tragic episode. It did take time, but my daughter convinced herself,” she adds.
Even after securing a job as a lecturer, bringing up a daughter, who has excelled in her studies society is sidelining her. “I am bound to sacrifice my privacy, since I live with a joint family. I only find it tough to cope with society that treats widows the way it does,” she says.