A Girl's Gang

When I went with my mother to the burning ghat and saw the familiar faces around her who had come to pay their last respects before she was cremated, one question that I had in my mind was why not a single person from her clan (be it her own blood-related family or her friends) came? 

All the people who were standing there were the ones who were related to my father by blood or the ones who were connected with my father's family. As days passed, I introspected her life. 

When I asked myself - "Where are her people?" "You are her people. You, your father, and your brother are all that she had!" 

I could clearly see through now - how gradually she distanced herself from her friends, deprioritized her own relatives, and stopped attending her own family functions just because either my brother or I had an exam or my father had to travel for work or for his own relatives' well-being. Gradually, my mother succumbed to the idea, like millions of other married women, that her husband and children are her world, her husband's priorities are her priorities, and her children are her sole responsibility.

 What about her own life, her ambitions, her likings? 

I don't think she ever cared about her own self. The only time she started ordering food was when I got a job. She lived her life through us, especially through me. 

She would always tell me - "Never ignore yourself. Eat and wear whatever you want, spend money on food, skin, and clothes as those are like investing in yourself. That is the reason why you have studied so hard for all these years. Had I been financially independent, I would have also done the same thing."

I still do not know if financial independence/earning money is the ultimate liberating factor for women, as I have seen many working women who, even after earning much, do not feel liberated enough to spend money on themselves. Rather, they feel they should be more submissive and more obliged towards household responsibilities. So, they end up working double - office work and as a home manager - they end up organizing their husband's wardrobe, planning food meals for the entire family for 4/5 times a day while working on a PPT for office, where they do not get uninterrupted time as they are the house managers who need to figure out what vegetables to buy so that dinner gets cooked, at what time the parents-teachers meeting starts, what gifts to buy for upcoming invitations for their kids' friends' birthday parties, etc., etc. 

Can the working women from our generation relate to this?! It's a big YES!!!

In contrast, I had heard that my maternal grandmother used to watch movies in a theatre with her group of female friends, her girls' gang. I had heard that my paternal grandmother would read storybooks she borrowed from her friends, and through the books, her rich friend would send money so that she could meet the ends for her kids. She, of course, repaid the money, but it was liberating for her, her window of power to do things at her own will. 

Both my grandmothers never worked; they were not financially independent. Rather, they CHOSE not to lose themselves in the process of being a wife and mother. Being a mother was one of their identities, not their only identity.

For many of us reading this blog, we are the first generation of working mothers. And we are working today because we had a mother who lost herself, gave up everything so that her girl, like me, could lead the life I am leading. We have seen sacrifice; we have seen a mother who had only one identity - that she was our mother.

Hence, we tend to be like her and end up being too exhausted, too stressed out, as we try to be top performers in the office, be the perfect lover for our husbands who would love to take us out on a romantic candlelight dinner, be the efficient housekeeper who, even if she turns blind, can find socks for her husband with a perfect working pair of eyes, and the ideal mother who is the only go-to place for all her kids' needs.

Too much to handle, isn't it?! Why not break the chain?!

Why not stop thinking of ourselves as the housekeeper, to start with? Why not start thinking of ourselves as humans who need me-time, friend-time, relaxing time? Also, why crave and wait for others to show sympathy and offer to share the load? 

Rather, can we start choosing ourselves at every step first, so that when it comes to taking care of the family, we also get counted as one who needs to be taken care of?

Do share your thoughts!!!