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Boundaries!




Sitabai (name changed )has been working with us since the founder’s time.Her dedication ,sincerity and efficicency is matchless.I have watched Sitabai excel in her work and yet have been almost a silent spectator to the family struggle she flaps around with.Her husband ,a ganja addict and an alcoholic has been to all eyes a thorn on her side.He has not earned a penny to my knowledge but has been a steady siphon sucking out all her savings on imagined and actual ailments,thanks to the bad habbits.


Every now and then Sitabai used to update us about her hubby’s headaches.It used to keep the entire family awake.Much to our chagrin she would take prescription analgesics and as would have it one fine day he started developing abdominal pain.

He perforated and presented with a serum potassium of 6.5 .We reffered him to a hospital in Jabalpur where he had a laparotomy.Fourteen days into the surgery he was still pouring out pus fro m the wound.

One day I took Sita Bai aside to alert her to the fact that her husband had not had a single day of headache the entire time he had been engrossed in the new ailment.Even as we did the dressing for him I observed Sita Bai and the loving way she treated her husband, like a little child ,even as he groaned while the dressing was on.

It set me thinking hard.What had he done in his life to deserve the loyalty,the love and everything that was being put into his life then.We owed him nothing but we owed Sita Bai everything we were doing because she deserved it and it was part of her staff benefit,but her husband….

Was there an issue about boundaries as far as Sita Bai was concerned because of which she was having to suffer all her life.The community she comes from ,there are no ‘till death do us apart’ vows.

I am reading a book on ‘Boundaries’.

It talks about the illustration of the good samaritan.

The questions raised in it was what if the wounded man had begged the good samaritan not to leave him at the hands of the other strangers but to stay with him till he got better?

It says ,perchance the good samaritan complied to the wishes of the wounded man,his business would have suffered and deep within the resentment at having missed out on his business would stay with him.

Sita Bai defies all this logic.She suffers with her husband in this pain,she suffered with him in his headaches,she suffered through his addictions and wayward ways,but at the work front she continues to excell.

I am at a loss to come to conclusions.

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