Why I hate Women's Day
There was this lost decade from the mid-80s that I did not have a conversation with my mother, except for the barest of monosyllables.
I would leave for my afternoon newspaper office early in the morning to work on the front page news, and then spend the rest of the day doing features and production and wouldn’t return till late.
I avoided her.
Growing up in sparsely populated parts of the country, she was the only female I have interacted with and, from a very young age, I promised myself that I would be the opposite of everything she stood for. Even if it meant jumping in a well just because she said not to!
Her notion of things moral and amoral would have put the Victorians to shame and I could only sigh (with a hope to escape) that I just wanted a career. Not tarnish irrevocably the family name!
Fast forward 20 years, and she now quietly converses with my lovely daughter and explains to her about the i-pill and tells her that it’s okay if she doesn’t get married to the guy she has, well something to do with.
She buys her the shortest dresses on display and preens as if she has won the Math Olympiad. I feel like screaming at every woman at this moment for their chameleon ways. My mother let down my side and took up a completely new one. How bizarre that she is the same woman for whom home, hearth and family was dearest and safest. Where did she get this wholly new thought process?
She who sent her teenage granddaughter overseas with a simple diktat: have fun. Huh!
What's changed?
Love of course, she is smitten.
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| This Woman’s Day, I want to question my mother's logic and her defiance. |
But what about me? Wasn’t she smitten enough with me?
This Woman’s Day, I want to question her logic and her defiance and the fact that women like my mother are the cause of that constant guilt factor for us women, because we never consider ourselves to be good enough at any time; for anybody, least of all ourselves.
We work because we killed ourselves to get a career, chose our men, carefully if possible, had children too and kept going at breakneck speed. That we still earn 25 per cent less than any average Indian man really grates, but we brought it upon ourselves didn’t we?
We wanted it all. Independence, love, family, financial security so why blame anyone else that we are always exhausted and still trying to please our mothers so frankly, to hell with Woman’s Day.
The most important woman in my life turned out to be a traitor. A completely different set of rules for a young 22-year-old girl and another for her own!
What is worse that with my advancing year, in growing horror, I realise that I have turned into my own mother! Like her, I fret and worry. I try not to say the wrong things to anger my kid and I watch in jealous awe and disbelief as my mother has become the cool one.
How, where and why?
She says she moved with the times. That she learnt her lesson with me! So, basically I was the experiment, which went wrong when old-fashioned systems didn’t work.
She took 20 years to inform me that I hadn’t turned out too badly and, in fact, she was rather proud. But couldn’t she say these things when I needed to hear them. I now watch movies on Netflix where every daughter seems to have a difficult relationship with their mother and here I thought I was unique.
Okay, I was a greenhorn reporter who wanted to visit crime scenes and in hindsight it does sound macabre and weird.
Yet, her grandkid has been living alone since leaving school. Goes out at 3 am, and my mother doesn’t bat an eyelid. That’s the new way, she clarifies when I send WhatsApp accusations of preferential treatment to her. I hope the CIA has fun reading them. Our fights are now digital and like her, so is my snooping.
I check up on my daughter at midnight to see if she is sleeping at home... I just happen to use a video call and I quickly peer into the screen to check where she actually is. Then I feel terrible for being so untrustworthy! While the doting granny sleeps in bliss!
Seriously, women don’t need one day. They have an entire life to feel guilty about something or the other! I, for one, am a total fraud!