What was the reply of the mom?
“When my mum walked out on my dad, she said to him, ‘One day this girl will make me proud’. All my life I’ve wanted my mum to be proud of the decision that she chose me,” Pooja said.
This year’s Miss India Pooja Chopra’s father was a commander in the Indian Navy. What an image a girl conjure up of a commander in the Indian Navy? Dashing, smart, suave? None in their wildest dream would think about a wife beater and female infanticidal, philanderer manic who can burn her daughter’s hand when she tried to save her mother from his blows? But that was exactly current Miss India Pooja Chopra’s father.
What Pooja Chopra, sister Shubhra says about her father,
Shubhra, who was seven when her mother walked out, remembers it all too clearly. “He used to hammer my mother… When I used to try to save her, he would burn out his cigarette on my hands.” The reason she remembers, Shubhra says, is because she still has the burn scars.
How her mother Neera Chopra brought them up?
Now a mother to a girl child herself, Shubhra says, “I want to be the kind of mother my mother was to us. I remember her giving us all the food in the house — we never slept hungry — and tying a dupatta around her stomach. She would say ‘my stomach is paining’, but I knew.”
What Miss India Pooja Chopra says about her mother?
“Today, when people call to congratulate me, it’s not me they pay tribute to, but to [my mother’s] life and her struggle. She’s the true woman of substance.”
But the thing is we have many unsung Neera Chopras who are struggling everyday to bring up their children with dignity and care. Their children might not be thrust into limelight like Pooja Chopra. But still these women of substance are going on with their fight against injustice and cruelty and bringing up their children to live a dignified life. They ought to be saluted too.
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