That Woman Who Set the Ball Rolling

© Velchitra Naathan

When god created genders, seldom he knew that human beings would make this the very foundation of various theories, ideologies and doctrines. The stronger sex, i.e., males, would exert its authority on the fairer sex, i.e., females, and would even produce biological evidences to assert that it is naturally superior. The women would rather reluctantly give in to the say of the men, for she would sadly be left with fewer choices to opt from. This burden of influence would keep weighing on them, depreciating their value in their own eyes. She would stop holding herself in high regards; forget about treating herself at par with the men in her life. Her life would, thus, confine to the four walls of the house and the chores concerned with it.

In the times that there were, it never even occurred to women that they could cross the boundaries of the house and think beyond the kitchen; that they could step out to earn and become financially independent. They had, on the contrary, become downright submissive and docile with years of subordination. Then set in the era of these trendsetters who thought they were different and capable enough to balance the house and their jobs. They not only banked on their knowledge and expertise in doing things, but also bravely championed the thought of commercializing it. This first working woman in the house really set the ball rolling for generations of financially independent women in her family.

These women, like proudly my mother, set out to give a meaning to their lives, to the education they had attained and to the fact that there was a market which would pay them for their skills. However, this did not necessarily mean they got to wash their hands off the conventional roles they had to play back home because they shouldered the responsibility of running the house with the man. The protagonist of the story would still be ‘him’ and she would have to hesitantly ride pillion. Nevertheless, it was never about an apparent show of masterful achievements for them; it was rather about effortlessness of being; about cultivated poise. These women who showed the courage to step out of their homes having, first, set that place right and, second, ironed out the kinks in their family members’ lives literally had their nerves made of steel. They instilled in all the women around them, be it their daughters, sisters or friends, a perception that there was no work ‘undoable’ by the females. Despite being the ‘biologically inferior’ sex, they did not have to play second fiddle to the males in any field, whatsoever. That confidence is what has driven us, and millions others, thus far to where we stand today. When I look back today to where it all started, the desire to be economically empowered all came from my mother, the first in her family to get to work and make a mark! 

A House with a Courtyard

Also published on Women's Web at: A House with a Courtyard

© myoki.in

When home is not a place but a family, house is also not just brick-and-mortar but another member of it. Where the drawing and the dining rooms were the elderlies, who took care of all the guests and comforted them with love and warmth, the bedroom was the love which locked plenty of secrets inside. It was like a safe in an already secured house, keeping sound a lot of things unsaid. The bedroom was the epitome of ‘haya,’ reflecting modesty and decency, while keeping the needs satiated. The kitchen was the mother who was akin to ‘Annapurna,’ fulfilling the most basic need of each member of the house – hunger. The mother knew what would suit everybody the best and, thus, served accordingly.

The kitchen was surely the most favorite of elders and younger ones alike, for it combined nutrition and flavors to serve them with sumptuous meals and healthful snacks. This was the fuel, which kept the clan running with a purpose through the day until the night when the doors would open their arms to receive each and all back. Each room fit like a glove, as did each member of the family, and life seemed to be fine when the question arose where the grandma was.

There she is, in the courtyard! Yes, she is the courtyard. She has gone astray finding a meaning to her existence; the beloved granny has gone missing from the house. The granny symbolized the place meant for soaking up the sun, playing in the wee hours, sitting together by the clan to cherish sunrises and sunsets, feeding the sparrows and talking to them for hours, taking in the freshness the plants gifted every morning, reading the newspaper and letting the spices out to dry. Sadly, the granny has been replaced by a part-time nanny, the balcony. The nanny tries so hard to cover up for our beloved grandma, but no matter how much efforts she puts in, she still ends up being a mere cheap copy. The nanny doesn’t greet the guests the way grandma did, leading them to the entrance while giving a glimpse of the ‘muggu’ decorated at the main gate. She doesn’t even let the ladies from the neighborhood flock together while bidding adieu to their family members and, then, feeling relaxed for the rest of the day. The grandma breathed in the traditions and talked about the customs; the nanny will take a long time to learn.

While all other family members continue to run in the mad race of life, there is no courtyard now, standing still, waiting for them to stop and enjoy the sweet nothings of life. The shady, airy and the most natural, the nucleus of the house, which lovingly gave the peace of sleeping under a tree during the summers  or taking in the sunlight during the winters and let the fresh air inside the house, has just been forgotten in the mundane, urban life. Sadly, the grandma is not even missed. 

The Birthday Dilemma

I safely landed in my late twenties last Wednesday and I must say the wisdom coming with ageing is nowhere close to what I had imagined it would be when I was far too young to look at this age with awe. This moment, this very second while I breathe and type this out, I have realized how time is tricking me into ageing while my brain is not budging from the status quo. It’s all in the mind, as they say, I realize how people take ages to grow up, while their body timeclock happily ticks away their minutes left to live.

I see people getting overtly crazy by the idea of celebrating the weekends, but I am also amazed thinking how living life by the weekends is leaving them with only four chances to ‘actually live’ every month. The rest of the time, they were just striking days off the calendar doing the stuff they call their routine. This was dark!

Never mind, while I'm still trying to fit in to the world of ‘grownups’ now, there are a few shocking acceptances that I have made, that I never thought I would but never did I know that I would be given options to choose from. Growing up is, indeed, funny and it gets sexier with age!

Aunty: You have got to make friends with this salutation, if you’re like me, a still-young girl in her late twenties. Kids do not know what to call you, because their moms, who you hang out with, are already planning their second. You cannot be the kids’ ‘rakhi sister’ because you just don’t fit in; hence, aunty.

Hola books!: They will be the sanest, safest, most interesting piece of wisdom you will ever come across. Besides, they don’t judge you and, yes, they don’t care.

Learn to earn: For a girl like me who belongs to the digital media space, learning never really stops – the sooner you accept this, the better. You’ll grow stale in the industry if you let your knowledge stay buried in your closet.

Tyaag-balidaan: Sometimes you would stop and wonder if it's really you, but trust me, having reached at this stage and this point in life, I DO think about my parents and spouse before I actively think about myself, be it in any front. I wouldn’t call it tyaag-balidaan per se, but hell yeah, it does feel like it and it silently engulfs your way of thinking in entirety. Now you know why your mom is the way she is.

Kids, yes I want to PLAN: I remember talking with my girlies, while still in my teenage, on how we would be able to put this to our parents that ‘yes we did it, and yay, we have been successful’; it would just get so effing apparent. This concept kind of feels nauseating in early twenties, but I am amazed how things change. While you’re still riding double happily after initial years of marriage, you feel the need of the third. Gradually, you start feeling being a part of this universe, you might just have a darn serious role to play in Darwin’s theory of evolution!

Money is the lube: No love, no trust, no other bullshit can replace the power of this five-letter word. It could actually engulf all merry, madness and magic; yes, money matters.

There’s more to you: Why not keep surprising yourself with things you never knew you could do, talents you never knew you could acquire and skills you never knew you could master – there’s no age barrier to learning, after all.

An open heart: In the era where we live, nobody really cares what others think of his personal life, but trust me, he would silently want to seek support from people around him. Carrying an open heart and increased degree of acceptance would lead to way simpler lives of people around you and, of course, to you commanding great respect for yourself.

Some more ME time: I love the girls who love themselves, who take care of themselves – what they wear, how they look, how they carry themselves, the style, the attitude – the girls who actually give time to themselves. I love this section of the community. They do not know how they become an inspiration for millions, who want to become like them. Some time is all it takes!

Nobody cares: Yes! So, at the end of the day, the only person who needs to be happy, satisfied and content is the person I’m gonna be looking at every day in the mirror! Trust me, rest everyone is totally busy to even think about us. So, I would rather do the things which make me want to embrace myself and love myself a little more.

This concept of birthdays, the time passing and its sudden reminders look all too amusing; you know when the last second passed, but do not know how the last year did. Why not we all might as well be our happiest in these years tiptoeing by us?

Largely Inquisitive

‘Check your dupatta and don’t let it fall off your shoulder’, Ma reminded Alka as they set out for a blind date, to meet a prospective family they might want to extend relations with. The Khanna’s have been looking for a groom for Alka for quite some time now, seven months to be precise, but have not been able to meet someone who would even closely satisfy the expectations of four members of the immediate family and the rest forty-five of the extended one. This particular prospect looked close enough to the ideal and, thus, everyone was interested to know more about them.

Kudos to the Internet and the startups mushrooming today, for they have not left any possible thing one could think of having done not having a way out online. From finding a groom to getting married to planning a kid to finding a lawyer – Google has an answer to all. Internet had played a role massive enough in the life of Alka that now she was about to meet someone she might just end up sleeping with for the rest of her life. That was only one of the aspects of the married life, she knew, but a grand one she just couldn’t let her thoughts off from.

Alka had always been an average performer throughout her life, according to her parents. She never scored ‘excellent’ to top in the class nor she cleared any of the famous entrance exams post high school. Therefore, her parents never expected big out of her and, surprisingly, so did Alka. She had a different perspective of looking at her life. Though she never topped any exams taken in school or post that, she still held a successful career of a data analyst, thanks to her keenness in mathematics. She was getting decently paid, not even close to what her ‘better performing’ classmates were, but decent enough for her to spend and save. She never attempted at the impossible but always expected great things to happen to her despite that. All her life before this day, she had had a lot of ‘close’ friends she used to hang out with, but none of them was ‘ideal’ enough for her parents to let her settle with. Thus, this day.

A family of four met a clan of three, all trying to fit awkwardly in a table for six in TGIF, Rajouri; thanks to the weekend and discounts up everywhere that successfully pulled out even the non-shoppers to come out and shop and, also, eat. While the families were busy in exchanging pleasantries, the two, Alka and Nakul, were just able to exchange glances. She had studied his profile on merishadi.com, tried to find him on every social media possible – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and, even, Tinder and she believed he would have done his part of investigations, too.

She was here on a purpose – either to find a better person than all her past beaus or to prove her parents wrong. She had gulped whole bunch of articles learning how to behave on your first date, like how to impress a family on your first meeting with them, how to drop subtle hints to the boy that there’s more to you, how to catch the ideal fish and how do you know he’s the one. Internet, once again, could play a massive role by being a sound informer to her. After having a pizza with a brick-like base, topped with chicken crumbs and a lot of cheese, it occurred to the elders that they should let the two speak to each other in private. Thus, a long walk down the aisle leading to the staircase and back.

This time, these moments, Alka has been waiting for this since the time they met. She finally waited for him to break the ice. With semblance to a corporate interview, Nakul began interrogating Alka about her life, her present and her plans for future. She bounced the same questions back at him and found him to be quite interesting. A few questions, some jokes and the meeting ended there.

The families liked each other as much as they had liked the profiles about each other on merishadi. Time flew and the two asked for more time and space to fill up with them unfurling. Long chats, unending text conversations and frequent phone calls had helped these two strangers know great deal about each other. Internet, once again, was her savior as she could talk as well as see him online for as good as free. She just loved technology and the time she was born in, when it is blooming at an unmatched pace.

There was a road which they were both treading on, the road which at first glance seemed really dark, and the one which was lightening itself up with each step taken forward. However, this road had a drawback; it lost all its sheen for every step taken backward. Nakul was forthcoming in revealing everything about himself, how he was not good with girls, or rather with the girls who did not find him interesting enough unless he had started earning, about how his relationships with these girls could never lead to any fling and how he only dreamt about the ones he could possibly hitch with but couldn’t, thanks to his lack of self-confidence.

In spite of him being extroverted about his life, Alka was smart enough to always weigh everything before she spoke. For her, the fact that their vibes matched was pretty much enough for them to start living together. It didn’t matter to her if he was new or a player, for she was prepared to never be judgmental on any grounds. Nakul, on the other hand, was largely inquisitive about her past, as he didn’t have any ‘darn happening’ thing ever happened to him and he, anyway, held a right to be informed.

On a final meeting before their marriage, Alka had to ventilate her thoughts out on what she feels is right. With tone full of pragmatism, she said, ‘I see this coming life together as a long vacation, the one which will bring us many surprises, happiness, tears and challenges along the way but it will be happy as long as we only tread forward. There’s a clear line of differentiation in time before I met you and the one after it. What really happened back then would always sound like a story to you and I’m no good a storyteller. So, the questions you’ve deep in your mind but never put forth, about my virginity, about how I came to know about sex, about how I ‘felt’ about my body changing and if I ever took any stupid steps to get answers to this inquisitiveness will all be interesting subjects for us to talk long on, but the ‘real’ answers for you to believe in will neither be blown nor they will be shown. You’re welcome if you, too, are willing to look forward on the path, while having interesting tête-à-tête over bottles of beer chilling right now, somewhere in the future.’

Nakul had no reasons why he should still be inquisitive about the ‘stories’ from the past.

On Your Anniversary!

Hola, MaPa!

Today y’all are going to cross a legendary milestone in your relationship and the history of our family and it brings me so much joy to write this letter to both of you! We are standing at a great height today, from where the view is surreal and things seem pretty much under control, but what has taken from you two to reach here is something indescribable. What has mattered all this while is you two surviving the hardships together, not looking at the size of the problems while solving them and wanting to win over any tough situation.

My chest swells with pride thinking how you have not only started small and made it big, but also how you, as two individuals, were in it together to face it all. No wonder you own every inch of freedom you enjoy today. Your marriage has been a perfect example of ‘opposites attract’ and we all know what has taken from both of you to get used to each other! There have been good times, bad and seriously sad, but it all passed like a short night and there we were, again, to welcome a fresh day.

You don’t know how your mere presence and your way of carrying your life has been there in our lives as a great beam of hope. All our childhood, we knew we had your back every time we were in some serious shit and I am sure that is a very big thing. You had this additional responsibility of solving our fuss while handling your own. Our lives, too, have been no less than drama but you have surely handled it all like an artist.

You’ve not only taught us surviving really long ‘rainy’ days, but also partying all the while we were passing them. This is the perfect time to thank you both for giving us a life we never knew we deserved, for bringing up us well in the circumstances that there were, for taking care of us through thick and thin, for helping us pass this really tough phase called, teenage, for putting up with our struggles, for understanding our wishes and demands, for trusting in us with our decisions in life, for loving us unconditionally all the while and for giving this amazing sense of support we always have in the back of our minds because of you two.

No wonder, we two are a hybrid version of a, clean-hearted, outspoken, very sweet dad and a smart, caring, loving mom! You two perfectly complete this incredible place we love to call our ‘home’!

Happy 30th, 70 more to go! *touchwood*!

I'm still waiting for you to get her home, bhai! :)

So Much So

What’s the most tragic, disheartening, striking and yet the most satisfying sibling-feeling you’ll ever get? It’s, probably, losing them to a life partner they would eventually spend their lives with. For all the time you might have spent together, you might not have cared a bit and might have also taken their presence tad too casually, but it is at this point in life that you want to shed your outer, worldly self, to bare your naked soul to them, showing that you have always been that ‘first’ next to them. It is this, weirdly-emotional, crazy-yet-sorted phase that I am going through right now!

So, the grand news that it is the time for us, the family members to push my brother into a brand new life of ‘husbandship’ and see him transition through a fun boyhood to an even merrier manhood, all laughing through his learning phase. While we shall remain on the shore bidding him happiness, he shall embark on a fresh new sailing, in a direction unexplored, to a more-fulfilling life. Well, this had to happen one day, so, now.
*tears of happiness*.

Having spent around two and a half decades with my brother, living closely and sharing all the fabrics of life with him, I can say our companionship has really seen a lot. All through the journey, I would have come across zillions of shades of my brother, some funny, other grim, some possessive, while others I-don’t-give-a-damn, some rather secretive and others open-to-all, some very loving and others close to breaking a bone, some really supporting and others contradicting, a few caring publicly and a lot more caring very secretly – I have grown as a sister all this while, seeing him change, grow up to be a better human being.

From the time I remember I know him to the time he cried for me on phone just after a day after my marriage to now, when I miss him even more because of the distance, of course, every day carries equal substance in the pages of my memories. I can say I have spent some of the best and the most memorable moments of my life with this champ. In fact, our journey in life has been a lot familiar. Right from studying in the school together, crossing teenage to experiencing a new phase, called college, to further getting placed and earning money, we have tasted these struggles almost at the same time.

I so feel both of our lives are so interconnected and strongly influenced by each other’s that we both would, now, get married to spouses with a similar initial, “H”! What a great, darn coincidence!

Finally, a note to the protagonist here: I wish you be as good a companion as you’ve been a big brother! Congratulations for entering a new phase of life and thanks for getting us all a nice sister-in-law! I really hope we have zillions of times like these in store ahead!

*Love*