Mission Delhi – Monica Bizira, Sector 5, Gurgaon
One of the one percent in 13 million.
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]
She is a woman with decided views. “This Indian culture!” exclaims Monica Bizira in an exasperated tone. “It’s a punishment to be a woman in our society.”
In her mid-50s, the lady has just got a job as a cook in an eatery in Gurgaon’s Sector 5 in the Greater Delhi Region. Tying the work-day apron, she expresses relief in finally being “able to stand on my own feet.”
Ms Bizira says with satisfaction that she succeeded in making her daughter an independent woman. “I gave her an education…. she is married with husband and kids, but she also has a job in Goa airport.”
She herself resides with her husband in a rented room in Palam Vihar but “I’ll soon be living alone.”
The lady says she has experienced a life of privilege as well as of great difficulties “and I accepted both situations but never surrendered to them.”
Looking around this street-facing eatery–very basic with a gas cylinder installed beside the plywood counter–Ms Bizira mutters that “who could imagine that in another time of my life I went to New York not once but twice.”
Nevertheless, the lady declares she is very happy to finally be a “free woman”. She says she has been living for others all these years but now “I want to live for myself and see my own talents surface. “
At this point, “neither I am dependent on anybody, nor is anybody dependent on me.”
Flashing an infectious grin, she declares that “this is the best state of being in anybody’s existence.”
[This is the 272nd portrait of Mission Delhi project]
Free woman
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