Women

-
Never knew writing to you was addictive. Aaj nahin likha toh sara din suna suna lag raha thaa. I thought it was because the husband was travelling on work that I felt this way. Well I was mistaken. Our Building has put some funny artificial Christmas tree and so has the school.Very sad ones all that I have seen so far. There is so much tackiness in the tree. I should be feeling happy that no one here is cutting down real trees. The way we are loosing our green cover, I wonder if my Grandchildren will get to see any trees. Let me also wonder if I will be alive to see my grandchildren.

Till one is not married , one is footloose and fancy free. I used to think these kind of conversations are made by overtly boring old people. With marriage, there is a funny attachment which comes in. It is so strong that it tears me down. Being a housewife makes me a worrier. Today there is this innate urge within me to generalize all that I am writing. With this generalization is the urge to 'Belong'. When I want to be exclusive, I say I do things differently. Using the word 'Better' as that would be immodest.

As soon as I walk into a party, I check out whether I want to belong or 'un belong'. Talking to men makes me 'un belong' amongst the wives. I am always wondering and worrying that they should not think I am eyeing their husbands. When I talk to the women, there is an unsaid censure I experience. I have worked in the corporates earlier, the housewife brigade feels I don't know a thing about running the house. They are the ones who married at the right time and have kids in their teens. The working women in the crowd think that she anyways would not have been able to be successful in her job.Then there is this whole lot of artistic women who have some defined talent like singing, dancing, teaching or people passionate about a cause, I completely admire them. I just don't understand their talent or their passion. So again I don't really belong. The kitty party type of women are dressed to the hilt, Power dressing in the party terms. I am too ill groomed for their liking. My hair has no highlights, no black nail polish or French manicured hands and definitely no heels. I don't even know how to put eyeliner properly.
I also can't chat up young kids. I find it best to leave them alone. Men, well, I don't mind them. With them, I am myself no inhibitions no fears. Even if they say something not so nice, I laugh it off. With men,I joke and get away with it.
But with women, I care. With women, I watch out.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nange Paon in Navratri

-
When I was working and staying in the hostel, I kind of stopped believing in most festivals and rituals. I thought all this was some weird things which people did, it had no scientific base and why should I follow anyone. In the college hostel, vacations were time to go home and not connected with any festival except Diwali. Sophia College hostel was a cocoon in the heart of South Mumbai. The campus with an old palace building was a quiet oasis with trees and birds, in the mayhem of Mumbai. No festival touched it unless the college celebrated it. The Polytechnic had rock shows and one Dandiya night every year, which it soon stopped having by 1988. Only celebration was the Vegetable Biryani in lunch on Sundays. The Polytechnic hostel did not even believe in pampering the children with food. Memories of bread being there round the clock for breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. For them, while the non vegetarians ate eggs for breakfast, the vegetarian had bread. And then when non vegetaria
Read more

Antakshari

-
Today we were playing antakshari at the Holi get together. We did not know any new songs so naturally only the golden melodies were being sung. The whole generation playing antakshari was singing the similar era songs on the alphabets they got. I realised a couple of things. In English language there is no game like Antakshari. How many sentences end with I or The? How can you sing when most songs start with I, The, Once, When and How?I cannot resist explaining the game, we all grow up with, in India. Antakshari means Ant : end , Akshar: alphabet ie last letter of the word. Akshar also means God. It also means God has the last word. Its a game with two teams and we call the teams as  'party'.  We say "Baithey baithey kya karein, karna hai kuchh kaam, shuru karo antakshari , le ka Hari ka naam." Translated from Hindi, We are sitting idle, lets do some work, lets start antakshari, starting with God's name. In Indian games, there is a lot of religion or belief in Go
Read more

Shraddh period in Hinduism

-
According to the Hindu calendar, this is the shraddh period going on.  For fifteen days in a year, the ancestors are remembered and prayed to. No auspicious events / ceremonies take place in this time. People use the tithi/date of death to invite a Pandit and feed the departed soul. It means you remember the person passed away, give food to the Pandit and the crows. People keep a cooked meal on the terrace. They try to make the favourite food of the departed person. My memories are of my Grandma mixing and crushing all the savouries with her hands and when it was in form of  a paste, my Uncle would go to the terrace and throw the food for the crows. Crows in Hinduism are considered messengers of the departed souls. A lot of people feed Gathiyas to the crows for the full year. If your ancestors are happy, then your life goes well ,is the general belief amongst Hindus. The shraddh period falls exactly between Ganpati and Navratri. One does not buy a house or have a wedding in this time.
Read more