Stereotyping...I

We often come across such people who, due to some particular reasons, often have to face stereotypical attitudes of the people around them. They are not socially accepted and left forlorn. They also have to tolerate the names they are called by; and being on the weaker side, they cannot react or answer back. When living among the so-called “normal people”, they live a miserable life due to the discrimination they face.

During a class of Social Psychology, we were assigned an activity to interview a person facing stereotypical attitudes of the people. Narrated below is the TRUE story of such a woman, a nurse, who has been facing certain stereotypes all her life. For privacy reasons, her name, place of job and other details have been censored...
She works at a hospital in Lahore. This is the written form of her recorded interview:

“My name is ***** *****. I am 40 years old. I live in a small house on rent, in ***** ***** Town. I have been serving as a nurse at the ****** Hospital since 1992.

I have two sisters and two brothers, and I am the elder-most of all. My father was a clerk, who died of heart attack when I was 10. You know a clerk’s pay is not sufficient to bring up six children, and after his death, we fell into the pit of financial crisis. My mother had to wash dishes at other people’s homes. She also stitched clothes in the night to make the both ends meet. As we grew older, our expenditures began to exceed her income. She started working for longer hours at homes, doing cleaning, washing and baby-sitting jobs. I saw her cry at nights and smile all day long so that we may not get stressed. But I was aware of the hardships she was facing. It often occurred that she did not eat anything and gave us her own piece of bread. We even had to spend weeks in starvation. After returning from school, I also helped my mother in stitching.

I succeeded in passing every class with first division. I had aimed to study and work hard so that I may become a helping hand for my mother and my siblings. I also wanted to get educated because I knew that an illiterate person does not gain any respect in the society. The biggest example was my mother, who was called “an-parh, jaahil, ganwaar” (illiterate) by the women of the society where we lived. That was an unforgettable moment for me when I saw the house-owner fight with my mother for the rent. At first he abused her a lot and slapped her, and she, being on the weaker hand, could not say a word. Then he even forced her to sleep with her. Then we finally left the house for good. My mother had to face all this because she was an illiterate widow.

Anyways, we got a room on rent where all seven of us lived together. I pursued my education. After matriculation, I was planning to get admission in F.A. program. But as they say, life is what happens when you are busy making your own plans, fate got more brutal to us. My youngest brother was asthmatic. One chilly, foggy midnight of December, he got asthma attack. We knew nobody would help us at that hour. We had no way of calling the doctor, so my mother wrapped him in her torn shawl, took him in his arms and ran out towards the hospital. She told me to stay with the rest of the kids. God knows what hit her right in front of the hospital, and she broke her legs. At five in the morning, a man came to our door and told us that our mother was in the hospital and my brother had passed away. I burst into tears; I did not cry that much at my father’s death as much as I cried for my mother that day. That was the turning point of my life, I had decided that now I have to shun my studies and earn for my family; my disabled mother.

I started looking for a job. I had no exposure or awareness of such things so, following my mother, I started washing dishes at people’s homes. One day, I read an advertisement regarding employment opportunity for matriculated girls. The job was of a nurse, and the trainees were given a stipend of Rs. 4000.  It seemed as if God had opened a golden door of opportunity for me. I went to ***** Hospital for the interview and got selected. It was a blessing for us all. My mother stitched clothes at home, my siblings went to school and I went on job. It seemed as if all of our problems were solved. But that was not the fact.

After becoming a nurse, I faced some really tough time. Most of our male attendants created problems for me and other nurses. They used to ogle at us and we had to work with them for hours. They were abusive and used to say ‘You are nurses like us, not doctors; do not expect any kind of respect from us or this world!’ All the nurses loathed them and complained against them; but our complaints went unheard. One of them even tried to grab my hand, and when I filed a complaint against him, I was threatened of losing my job. So the two initial lessons I got from there were; firstly, a nurse has no respect in the society and secondly, we have to be hypocritical to get benefits.

We started interacting with the patients and the faculty of the hospital. The head nurse was a really nice woman, who used to give us moral lectures other than instructions for work. I still remember what she said on the first day of our meeting, she said that “People will never realize our significance and services; they will always consider us inferior, filthy and despicable creatures. I am the head nurse, still people contempt me.” But I did not care about the people’s opinions, as far as I was earning for my family. Initially, I was assigned the duty of the children’s ward. I enjoyed working there and my pay was increased when I was assigned night duty in that ward. But after two years, I, along with three other nurses, was shifted to the general ward. I felt sympathy for those in pain, as I had seen my own brother’s restlessness in asthma and the disability of my mother. Most of the people there liked me and I felt secure when they called me “sister”. But I realized that being called a “sister” is way different than being a REAL sister! 

Often, young male patients gave me written notes which had dirty messages in them. But due to my past experience with the trainer, I knew there was no use telling anyone, anything. Often, men used to hold my hand, arm, veil and even my shalwar while taking medicine or getting injected. Even the doctors who used to call us “sister” stared lustfully at us and talked about vulgar things with us in the wards. I told our head nurse about those incidents, but she said that it was a part of our job to overlook such incidents because we are bound to serve people…

Time flew by, and our financial condition grew better each day. My mother did not have to stitch clothes any more and my siblings were in good colleges and universities. We had started interacting with other women of our locality too. My mother told me not to mention my profession to anyone because people may become judgemental and talk nuisance. I used to go for work in a black burqa (gown).
Elderly women often brought proposals for me. They used to ask me what I was doing and I had to make up some story. I was tired of telling lies, my conscience kept on condemning me for that. I wanted to live freely,

without any fear of the people’s opinion or tripe. But before I could declare my occupation, one of the

locality women saw me at the hospital and told the other neighbors of the “cheap” profession I belonged to. After that, people stepped back an began to avoid us. We, especially I, were not invited at any wedding, function, funeral or gathering. My only friend in that locality, Shazia, also left me due to her parents’ pressure on her against me. My younger siblings still met people outside, but I did not.

When I was twenty four, I met Dr. ****** ***, a heart specialist. I was serving in the same ward where he checked his patients. I used to stay there for night duty and he also had similar schedules. He spoke to me very politely, and called me “Miss *****”, which seemed much respectful than so-called “sister”. He adored my intellect, beauty and responsibility. He even said that he had been looking for a sincere and caring girl like me. One day he gave me a ring and proposed me. I spoke to my mother about it, and after her consent, I accepted his proposal. I used to cook things for him and served him in the hospital. He also showed much concern when he met me in the ward. He promised to marry me soon. One morning, I was taking the patients’ record files to his office. Before I knocked at the door, I heard him pleading to someone, begging for apology. The door was open just a crack, and I saw him kneeling on the floor in front of his enraged mother. I was perplexed, but could not understand the situation. And then the bombshells fell. She was saying, “How could you fall for a low class nurse?? What will the society say?? I will marry you to anyone but a nurse. *****( the nurse) is nice, but after all, she does not hold any respectable status in our society. Mrs. Shah has a doctor and a lecturer daughter-in-law…how can a nurse be my…” I stumbled back to the ward. For the first time, being a nurse cut me through the bone. After that day, Dr. Asghar began to elude me. I never dared to ask him “Why?”, because we both knew it pretty well. 
After two months, he got married. My younger sisters were 21 and 20 by then. So I started arranging for their marriages. They both were doing M.B.B.S, so they got married in respectable middle class families. I turned down every proposal because I could not leave my family to live in misery again. Also, I did not have the strength to face people’s narrow-mindedness any more. Within next three years, my brothers - one software engineer and other an M.A. in English- got settled and married too. I felt the responsibilities off my shoulders now. But my sisters-in-law did not approve of my career either. They had “status issues”. One of them even accused me of being a lose character nurse, who keeps looking for a prey! My brothers, who had been brought up by me, also stood by their wives and eventually, I had to leave the house. During those days, a widow flat scheme was introduced. I applied on my mother’s name and we shifted there. I often try to contact my sisters. Though they are not as brutal and insensitive as my brothers, still, their in-laws do not want anyone to know that they have a nurse sister-in-law…

My mother died three years ago and I am satisfied that I served her till her last breath. I am still single and live with my friends, nurses of course, in the hospital quarters. We live together and care for each other like a family, a true family. I sometimes wonder why being a nurse is so bad in this society. What sin have we nurses committed? Am I more sinful than those emotionless siblings who left their elder sister and disabled mother who made so many sacrifices to bring them up? Are we nurses more lose-character than those ogling-eyed decent doctors and patients?? You know the answer, but you won’t say it, because we are the stereotyped ones!”

                                                                                                                                               Continued...

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