Karwa Chauth : Then and Now

The first Karva Chauth after my separation, I dreaded the day.

Not because I wanted my marriage back. But because, after sixteen years, I was no longer part of something I had always belonged to.

I had done so much work on myself before I left. I had sat with my fears, witnessed my grief, and chosen a different life.

And still, that day hurt.

The first year was strange that way. Some days felt liberating. Some days caught me completely off guard.

There were days I looked forward to, and days I dreaded.

Karva Chauth was one of them.

I didn’t have beautiful memories of this festival to miss. But I had been a married woman for sixteen years. I had occupied that place for so long that I hadn’t realised how much its absence would affect me.

I didn’t want to go back.

And yet, I felt the loss of belonging somewhere I no longer wanted to be.

I remember how confusing that was.

How do you explain to yourself that you don’t want something, but its absence can still hurt?

We do the work. We understand our fears. We sit with our grief. We finally find the courage to do what we know we need to do.

And then life happens.

A festival comes around. Someone asks a question. We see other people living a life we once lived. Something catches us by surprise, and for a moment, we are back in a feeling we thought we had left behind.

And we wonder, haven’t I done enough work on this already?

Why does this still touch me?

I wish I had understood then that I didn’t have to be done with a feeling just because I had understood it.

Some things take time.

Not because we haven’t tried hard enough. Sometimes, we are simply living through the parts of a change we couldn’t have known until we got there.

This year, as the Karva Chauth festivities begin, I find myself watching women around me shop for their clothes, visit their tailors, get their mehendi done. I hear them talking about the gifts they want, the little things they are looking forward to.

And I feel happy for them.

I don’t feel that old ache of not belonging. I don’t feel the need to be part of it.

Something that was difficult for me to sit with that first year feels so different today.

And this year, I am going to take my boys out. We will eat good food, have fun, and celebrate the day in our own way.

I find myself looking forward to it.

And I think about the woman I was that first year. How much courage it had taken to choose a different life, and how there were still days when that choice hurt.

I wish I could tell her that one day, this day would feel different.

Not because she would have found a way to convince herself that she had made the right choice.

But because she would no longer need to have that conversation with herself.

I wonder how many of us are still having it.

You have left, but some days you miss what you left behind.

You know you don’t want to return, but a part of you still wants to know that you belonged there.

You have made peace with a decision, until something happens and you find yourself questioning why it still hurts.

And perhaps the hardest part is that you don’t even know what you are grieving anymore.

The person? The life? The place you occupied? The version of yourself who thought things would turn out differently?

Or perhaps you are just tired of feeling something you believe you should have moved past by now.

I know what it is to have done the work and still be surprised by your own feelings.

And I know what it is to look back one day and realise that something which once took so much out of you has become just another part of your life.

Not erased. Not denied.

Just no longer holding you in the same place.

I wonder what we do to ourselves when we keep expecting our hearts to be done with something just because our minds have understood it.

What if the fact that it still hurts today doesn’t mean you haven’t healed?

And what if, instead of asking yourself why you aren’t over it yet, you could allow yourself to be where you are, without making that another thing you need to fix?