Ones left behind
“I have been psychologically in quarantine since I came”, said Sarabjit who came to Italy from India with her son following her husband in 2017. Her husband works in a car wash company and their son started studying immediately after they came. She cannot read or write so for her it is almost impossible to learn a new language (Italian) and communicate with anyone other than her family who is away for most of the day. To make it even worse her home now is on a hill with very little human interactions. Spending all day alone almost every day has started taking toll on her health. In fact, she has developed early signs of autophobia, a psychological disorder of being afraid when alone, which sometimes causes sudden increases in blood pressure or in heartbeat for the control of which she takes medication regularly. Her days go by doing household chores and sitting outside the front door looking at the road and waiting for her son to come back from school. She wishes her parents had sent her to school when she was a kid which would have helped her now learning a new language, communicating and doing tasks like going out to buy groceries so she wouldn’t have felt to be a burden on her family and above all to be left behind alone. Sarabjit is the story of millions of women who come from a system where the concept of girl-child education doesn’t exist. The society that decides their fate even before they are born. A system where women don’t own their own identities, they are known as either someone’s wife, mother or daughter, and sacrifices they make stay unnoticed as well the status of their mental health