We must taste the bitter before we can appreciate the sweet..!!!

We talk about nature, water, land, fresh air, confidence and freedom but everything comes with a price.

I remember my time when I moved to Canada and was renting one of basement apartment where I was to pay for my stay and food.

One would imagine that if you pay you have no other obligation but that’s not how it was. I used to respect and treat the owner and his wife as my parents. I did everything in that house as if it’s my responsibility.

This nature of mine gave me a tough time to deal with my day to day things. When I was looking for a job, I was told to help with them in Jesus work. The owner was a priest who would make me translate his stories and poems in other Indian languages so that it can reach to those many people and that many people he will be able to convert them into Pentecostal Christians.

Initially, the way it was put on me as a task I thought I can ask them if my rent can be waived but then I was told I shouldn’t expect something like this when I am doing god’s work.

I saw that there was another room in the basement that was rented by another girl who came from Sri Lanka and we both didn’t take much time to become friends. It was her Yamuna who took me out in downtown and made me apply for jobs. Since the say I got the job the owner and his wife started telling me to stay away from Yamuna. It reached to a level where Yamuna moved out to some other place and I felt very lonely.

I was forced to go to church with them every Sunday and start praying every day in their house morning and evening.

Even though I was paying my rent and staying in that house. The couple made me do all their household chores such as help them washing dishes, cutting vegetables etc. I always took as helping them but it took too much stress when they started making me do things such as grate a whole coconut, cut the vegetables in different suggested sizes and pack them in zip-lock bags and put it in freezer during my day off.

Those days finishing my work at night and coming from downtown to home used to be almost mid-night and hence after a tiring day I went to bed at 1 am that too with a bad headache. At 4 am my door is banged asking me to wake up because we need to get up and pray for their son who is leaving for Malaysia for work. I had taken some medicine hence I couldn’t wake up and when I did wake up it was 7 am in the morning and the priest got so mad at me that he started scolding me for not being responsible and being part of the prayer. Even though I apologized for not joining the prayer he kept on repeating and making me feel guilty as if I did something wrong by not attending the prayer in the early morning for his son.

I really started feeling what am I doing. Why I have to be so obligated when their own kids don’t listen to them. As a human and as an agnostic person I did what I did but suffering and injustice is something that I am not taught to tolerate.

As they say everything has a limit. It was my time when I decided to move on and took an apartment to live by my own. Yes, in those days in a new place, new country it was fear in my mind. I was more scared because I was alone and being a woman I was scared of everyone around. It’s this fear that always kept me way from enjoying the freedom. Slowly, I moved from one job to the other and actually started living and organizing my life.

The freedom to live, the freedom to get to live by yourself and not be answerable to anything is something a relief which I only realized after what I went through.

Never suppress anyone even if you are in a position to because once a person starts disliking this behavior they want to go far from you. Love people and let people love you. Freedom should not be by losing anyone.

"It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you" :)

~ Dawn