Filmmaker Anindita Sarbadhicari is not married. She is yet to find the right man to spend the rest of her life with and she prides herself for what she calls "swimming against the tide" in a society that's marked by boundaries, norms and taboos.
And now she's oozing confidence at having taken that giant leap of becoming a mother. Nothing exceptional about that, except may be the fact that she bought the sperm over a counter of a sperm bank in Kolkata. And unlike most others who prefer keeping artificial insemination a secret, Anindita has come out in the open about her decision to have a baby from an anonymous sperm donor.
"I did this not because I wanted to make a social statement, but because I wanted to become a mother", says Anindita. "I am pushing 40 and I realise that my biological clock may not be waiting for me to find the love of my life. The decision wasn't made overnight. It was a considered call taken after much deliberation and I received love and support from the people who matter to me," the filmmaker added even as she insisted about living her life by her own rules.
"The law of the land and development in science allow me to become a single mother and I have only exercised that right," she gleamed.
But what about the institution of marriage? Anindita draws her inspiration from Columbian Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magnum opus 'Love in the Time of Cholera' where the protagonist realises love at the far end of his life. "Marriage as an institution does not hold supreme importance for me. Finding love and the commitment that goes with it can happen anytime in life. Among all the relationships we live in, that's the only relationship we choose unlike the others which are a given. Motherhood cannot wait till then since my body is ageing," she states.
As far as social taboos are concerned, the filmmaker feels that a lot of them are only in the mind. "They may or may not be there. And even if they did, those boundaries need to be pushed," Anindita asserts.
But for now the would-be single mother, who's in the second trimester of pregnancy, is more focussed on the responsibilities that accompany the bringing of a new life in this world. All the rest can wait.
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