Women of Substance Who Enriched My Life

I grew up in India’s Urbs Prima Mumbai. The city provided a feisty cosmopolitan space for my childhood, teen and early adult years.   My south Indian middle class parents brought me up on a healthy diet of equality with my two male siblings. They probably did that more out of love and a sense of fair play rather than consciousness about women’s rights.  But that worked for me! In the 1980s as a young woman ‘stepping out into the world’ I looked forward eagerly to what life had to offer. Educated, enthusiastic, but ignorant about realities beyond my own life, I took for granted opportunities and choices that came my way. 

My first job as a professional social worker took me into the lives of individuals who faced many disadvantages. Coming as I did from a comfortable and reasonably liberal family I remember feeling shocked when I first began to comprehend that for many women life offered few opportunities - to choose, to make decisions, to dream or have aspirations.

Moving far ahead from those early days I have now had the chance to balance family, work and everything in between. My convictions about gender equality have become an unquestionable part of my core being. But I am still learning newer and deeper nuances of how access to gender equality plays out.  And I believe (hope) my perceptions have matured. I now realize and deeply appreciate that I was able to use opportunities, exercise choices because of the support I received during different times in my life. From my family, my husband - yes most definitely. But there are important others….. other women ……..…….  who have been there for me.  

My husband and I still fondly remember young Latika who helped us look after our toddler son when as first time parents we were anxious to do everything right. When our daughter arrived some years later I went back to work within three months because we had access to the baby care services of the super efficient Pavithra.

Later there was the elderly Annamma. Just about literate, her wise and reassuring presence in our lives helped both my husband and I concentrate on our busy jobs which for several years included travelling. She made sure there was food on our table, especially when the kids got home from school. At her own home she looked after her disabled husband, while making sure her son and daughters were educated.

Vanita has cooked all our meals for the past several years. Just thirty years of age she is a single mother to a twelve year old boy with special needs. She also supports her disabled mother. Working hard as a cook in five households she is a fast and enthusiastic learner. She now comes to work riding her newly acquired scooter, is taking spoken English lessons on her smart phone and arranging her son’s admission to a special school.

Sprightly youngish Reena comes to our house every day also riding her scooter. She dusts brooms and mops our home keeping it clean and tidy. Functionally educated she works shoulder to shoulder with her equally hard working husband for their family’s development. Their son is in college and daughter is completing school, both smart and bright.

A few years ago a whole new dimension opened up in my life. My mother entered a stage where she needed full time care. Initially we hired Jayalakshmi who came in to help part-time. An elderly widow, she lived in a rented place with her bachelor son and shared household expenses with him. She had no savings, hardly any assets but I could never convince her to save some of her salary for herself. Her generosity of spirit and ready smile was a source of great strength at a time when my mother’s progressing condition often left me emotionally drained. Then my mother’s care requirements became more intense.

We contacted a home nursing agency that, over two years, sent us a number of trained home care helpers who stayed with us for short durations. At first I was pretty anxious at the very idea of having someone living with us. I insisted the agency send ladies who were at least forty and therefore, as I believed, mature. The agency had a workable strategy for women like me.  They sent whoever they could and simply told me she was forty! Barring two all of them were under 25 and they proved me completely wrong.

My mother’s caregivers were all young women from poor rural homes who had moved to the city to earn. Most of them had dropped out of school. The agency provided them accommodation, trained them and then placed them in homes like ours. I soon realized that they all went about their job professionally. Providing live-in care to a totally dependent senior is really tough but none of them dodged work. In fact they even indulged my mother’s varying moods and brushed aside any unpleasantness. In between work they had long giggling phone conversations, listened to music and watched movies on their phones. I know they regularly sent money to their families and have heard them argue vehemently with parents and siblings about money or marriage decisions.

I have not used real names here but the way these women have touched my life is real. They are living difficult lives. Concepts of feminism and notions of equality are not part of their conversations. Working, supporting family are realities of life. But they haven’t remained spectators. They have grabbed opportunities, created choices, and the younger among them are daring to want more.

I want to salute them through my blog. I want to say thank you for enriching my life; for teaching me what it means to meet life full on, for illuminating those deeper layers that make each one of you an amazing woman of substance.

 

 

 

 

A few days back International women’s day was marked the world over. As I tried to take in the many arguments being presented on different media about women’s achievements and challenges I found myself thinking back….. reflecting on my own life…...........