Am I a liberated woman ?

Am I a liberated woman, liberated in the real sense of the word. Liberated means free from traditional opinions or ways of behaving that might limit you in what you think or do. It means not following traditional ways of behaving or old ideas as per Cambridge dictionary. I fancy myself a liberated woman, am I mixing up being emancipated with being liberated? Emancipated means free from another person’s control or free from social or political limitations and surely I am one to a large extent. I have grown up in a very democratic household, an open household where though my father was clearly the head of the family but he never behaved in a dictatorial or for that matter in a manner that even ever smacked of him imposing his will on us. My mother’s deference towards my father was out of genuine respect, love and affection, though she would have her way whenever she needed to. I never felt while growing up that my mother was subject to my father’s authority, which she wasn’t and is still not or she and her actions in any way were restricted or constrained because of her being a woman. It looked like a very comfortable arrangement. Papa was getting the money in to the house and mummy was running the household. Our nuclear family was a part of a large, deeply connected and a loving larger family. I would see similar arrangements in other households also. Two of my aunts were working women, even then they were discharging similar duties towards the household that others who were not going out to work were discharging albeit to a wee bit little lesser extent if I may say so. I was never told by my parents, especially my father that I could not do or get something or have to do some specific tasks or behave in a certain way because I was a girl. In fact to be honest I didn’t realise the difference between being a girl or a boy while growing up for a while. Once I was around ten or eleven I started to hear people around me say things like, you need to behave like a girl or girls don’t do this or that or why are you always wanting to do what boys do. These were innocuous comments made by people who otherwise were very loving and caring and if I say that these comments were being made according to them in my interest would not be wrong. It never bothered me because it was not being reinforced by my parents inside our house and since we were a nuclear family it didn’t matter much what others had to say. I was a little girl, would forget these things very soon and continue to behave the only way I knew again when we met these people who were making these comments. After a while I realised that people would tell my parents especially father that girls have to be raised like girls and you have given a long rope to your daughters. My mother around this time I think wasn’t so sure of herself so often she would also question my father as to why he wasn’t being more careful with us. I had all masculine qualities my mother would say and by that she would mean I had zid( stubbornness) , hath (insistence), temper, ego, assertiveness. Girls were supposed to be calm, composed and submissive. She would also give me examples at times of other girls within the family or friends’ circle who were submissive or demure, behaved like girls according to her and helped their mothers’ with the household chores. I remember telling her that I didn’t behave like them because I wasn’t them and I don’t want to be like them. My refrain used to be that why should I help you with anything when you have people working for you to do these chores. My mother used to get worried and frustrated with me and also with my father who had allowed me complete freedom to grow as a person. To be fair to her, I can’t blame her at all as she was a woman of her times, a product of her circumstances and her social milieu. She was thinking ahead and was making herself unnecessarily worried about how would a girl like me find a suitable match. I didn’t fit the description of a girl who is supposed to have all great feminine qualities. Apart from the attributes mentioned above I also had a mind of my own, I had a voice which I used very often to ask questions from everyone around me and also to debate with people who I wasn’t supposed to argue with at all. For my poor mother this was not a good sign for things to come. I am not saying that my father was socially bohemian if that describes what I want to say, he wasn’t though a disciplinarian but he had his own ways to make sure that we worked hard, we develop work ethics, we learn to value integrity and honesty, we have confidence in our self-worth and most importantly we have ample self-esteem. He was invested in our overall development and always encouraged us to explore everything that we came across and engaged with us like the new age dad does at present. He treated us as an aware, sensitive, doting, loving father would treat his children irrespective of their gender. This was in contradiction with what was happening outside our household, in our larger family, friends’ houses and society in general. This dichotomy started to have an impact on my psyche without my conscious awareness or even slightest realisation at that point in time, in fact till much later in life. I started to figure out that what happens inside our household is not how the world works. In general even in educated and well-heeled families girls were supposed to behave a certain way if she was to be liked or get approval, dress up according to the sensitivities of everyone around her and speak only when it is appropriate for a girl to speak. Asking questions that too uncomfortable ones, challenging the established norms and the accepted way of life or even their authority if that didn’t make sense, from elders was out-rightly bad manners and reflected upon my mother’s skill of raising a daughter. People around her would often make a cutting remark that my mother wasn’t doing a good job as her daughter was what she was. Wanting to be treated as an equal in every which way not just the portions of goodies or clothes but even when it came to choosing my subjects in college or pursuing a particular profession to an opportunity to speak my mind in extended family gatherings and to have full authority regarding who I wanted to marry and have an independent opinion on anything and everything like everyone else was something that didn’t go well with many people. When I tried to have a say in how rituals or customs would be followed in my wedding, I was rebuked and reprimanded. When I reminded my family that my male cousins before me have been lauded for their belief and action they relented. When I called out the hypocrisy, my family yielded, they were defensive and in principle agreed with me. They said they were trying to protect me as the world outside was still not ready to deal with and accept girls like me. When I told them that my fiancé is onboard and he knows who I am as a person, they were relieved. I must however credit everyone in my eco-system to have made their peace with who I was and hopefully who I am by treating me like a different species of woman. I don’t think it was an acknowledgement and acceptance of who I was as a person but was a kind of an arrangement where I was allowed to be myself. People around me still make comments and statements which sometimes I can’t figure out whether are complements or complaints, sarcasm or even grudge dressed as compliments. The point that I am trying to make is that even though I was very fortunate to have got the parents that I had especially my father who had the courage of conviction and raised us the way he felt was right for his daughters, I don’t think we are or I am a liberated woman in the real sense of the word. My free spirit got tempered by the atmosphere of my surroundings, by the community mores and societal norms that I was observing while growing up. No one could stop that, neither my father’s conviction, nor my own awareness which in any case came pretty late in life. No one has any control on what happens outside of a house and no one can stop a child imbibing from observing the larger family, the community and the society around them. Extended family, friends, community and society was still working on the premise of girls being the weaker sex, on the premise that there is a difference between a girl and a boy and both genders have their specific roles for families and society to work normally and efficiently. No one still questioned these premises in any significant way in those days in the society that I was growing up in. Girls were happy being girls and looked down upon girls who were not the quintessential girls. These are called structural and systemic biases and condition a child in a manner that when they grow up, they fit in the system and by and large play their supposed roles. This is social conditioning and I was no exception as I too was subject to all these biases though in a little diluted form because of what was happening inside the house. I became a person that I have become as a result of my experiences both inside of my own house and also outside of the house. The confidence that I got from inside my house equipped me to a large extent to deal with what I was facing outside but could not ensure that I don’t get affected by that deep inside me . My thinking and thought process is a result of this mixed experience. I rejected things which were out rightly, blatantly discriminatory for women but could not even recognise stuff that had very nuanced and subtle biases. I never questioned Kanya-Daan when it was perfommed at my wedding because it was a done think. It is a very emotional subject and a great example of social conditioning of girls since they are told being 'paraya dhan' since the day they are born but now it doesn’t agree with me as a concept. My instinct after I got married that I need to run my house which essentially meant the kitchen and the general up keep of the house since I am the lady of the house, a feeling that i had some duties towards my in-laws without anyone having to tell me are to my mind examples of social conditioning. I don’t think my husband would have had any such feeling towards my parents. Yes technically I became a part of his family as per the trsditions but we were not living with them. We had set up our own house as we lived in a different city so both of us left our parents’ house to set up our own and since we were married to each other, my family was also as much family to him as was his to mine. Another example is when I became a mother the feeling that child rearing was my primary responsibility. I am just looking back at my life and trying to make sense of everything. I don’t have too many regrets and have lived a good life and looking forward to living a fulfilling one. I have been as liberated as my circumstances, socio-economic background, education and experiences have allowed me to be. It’s just that instead of having some fanciful ideas about myself, I am trying to delve deeper to discover who I really am.

Menopause

Menopause the word, seems to mock me and dares me to figure out what this monster is all about. The word seems to say everything loud and clear that it does to a woman or doesn’t let a woman do when it is at her throat. Does menopause without any compunction say ‘me, no pause, come what may’ as in I am a deadly monster, I don’t spare anyone and will inflict myself upon you in all my glory whatever might be your fate or is it bellowing at me to say aloud ‘me, can’t pause, whatever I might be dealing with’ thus forcing me to speak out my fate? Both are true, neither life or its motions and other myriad stuff we call life stops nor does the ferocity of the onslaught of this monster abate. It continues to unleash a toxic mix of sometimes mysterious, inexplicable mostly invisible symptoms and a woman who looks hale and hearty from the outside is on the verge of a volcanic eruption triggered by a seismic emotional tremor from inside. It is a very complex state of mind that one finds oneself in. Hormones and chemicals inside a woman are having a free run, physical strength and appearance is taking a beating and most of us don’t know what to do with ourselves. In my case I have had what I call a ‘bonsai career’. I never let go of my profession completely but adapted it to suit my maternal instincts and I must add out of free will and as a choice made by myself without any external factor influencing my decision. As a result I have had a career but it could never reach its potential as I wanted it to grow in a certain way only so that I didn’t lose touch with it and at the same time didn’t get consumed and subsumed by it. I was confident that the day I decide to go full steam in to my profession I would be able to do it. Today I am working towards it in my own way but it is tougher and I still don’t know, how many more order of magnitude tougher, than I had thought it would be. It’s not a rant, I am just stating facts. I don’t need pity, I might do well with empathy. I wanted everything in my life and I was confident that I could achieve that if I change the order of doing things a little bit. The years that usually in an ordinary course women spend nursing and nurturing their careers, I spent nursing and nurturing my children and I wanted it that way. I carried on with a bonsai career and at the cost of repetition I must say as a matter of choice. I wanted to take a leap of faith and go full steam in to my career after I thought I was done with my active motherhood duties. I knew that this would coincide with me being peri-menopausal but never fathomed that it could upset my plans in any significant manner. I still don’t know with certainty how my present state of mind is affecting my plans. My plans are not going as per my schedule, something is amiss in me as a person, in my motivation, tenacity and focus and for good reasons I am tempted to pronounce this monster guilty. I was and I still am hopeful of being able to carve myself a niche despite life having become what it has become. Menopause to me was another milestone that as a woman I knew I would reach one day. I didn’t know the journey to this destination would be fraught with so much anxiety, physical discomfort, unexplained ennui and emptiness in ample doses. I didn’t have even the faintest clue that it would be much more arduous and protracted than I ever thought, to say the least. This is when I am not suffering from any of the symptoms in extreme at all. I have been experiencing anxiety and nervousness occasionally but most of the time I can counsel myself to my senses and other times I am ok after talking to a friend or reading something or distracting myself by doing some physical activity. The strangest part is that no one talks about it, even us women, amongst ourselves, as much as I think we should. We don’t warn one another of this impending storm that each one of us has to weather. We don’t get to prepare ourselves to deal with this life altering experience mostly because it is not a part of the discourse. No one around us usually know or let’s say can fathom the extent of our grief and pain both physical and mental when we are going through pre-menopausal and menopausal phase. I think everyone, including us women, feel that it has been happening since always and women before us never made much fuss about it so why are we making a big deal about it. Since we women aren’t talking much about it amongst ourselves in a meaningful manner I am sure at some point each one of us feel that may be we are overeating or being hypersensitive or behaving in a very entitled manner. We have a sense of guilt thinking that since I am not the only one going through this upheaval then why am I the only one complaining and talking about it. Once you start to talk with other women you realise everyone is struggling in one way or another. Very few women have an easy ride. Every battle is unique in the sense that each one of us get different symptoms in different measures. Some have excessive bleeding while some get hot flushes all the time. Some feel weepy, some feel anxious, some have panic attacks, some have palpitations, some have a sinking feeling, some have a foggy brain, some get a weak gut, some have a disturbed sleep pattern and some get pigmentation, some have mood swings and some get full blown depression. Some symptoms will stay with us for life and some abate with passage of time. I was talking to my gynaecologist and she told me about the entire spectrum of symptoms that a woman could experience and the bandwidth of that spectrum was absolutely mind boggling. She advised me to be more aware of my health, my heart and not to dismiss everything that I feel as a side effect of being in this phase. She wanted me to take care of both my physical and mental health, look after my diet and keep myself hydrated. Incidentally the timings of this monster’s arrival in a woman’s life are also perfect. The moment usually a woman starts to breathe a little easy after having raised her family and is either settling down in her career yet another time after innumerable breaks ( talking about typical middle class women who immigrate to cities for earning their livelihoods, this description might not fit everyone) or struggling to reinvent herself to find an occupation suitable to her education, experience and aptitude, this monster starts to knock at your door. This is usually a time in a woman’s life when her nest is either empty or on the verge of getting empty, parents are growing old and she herself has come a long way in her life without actually realising it. You are in the process of reallocating your time and energy more towards your own well -being, dreams, ambition and desires when suddenly you start to wonder that there is something really wrong with you. Either your mental health or your physical health is definitely compromised. All of a sudden the energy level starts to dip, multitasking for which most of us women pride ourselves, looks the most difficult thing in the world. A feeling of inadequacy and worthlessness starts to engulf you. You find yourself a different person in the mirror, the greys on your head are breeding like rabbits, the adipose comes uninvited as if with a vengeance and settles down at all unwanted places despite having successfully enforced a very strict ‘no vacancy’ and ‘no trespassing allowed’ rule all your life. Skin is not as soft and supple as you remember it was when you last saw yourself in the mirror. The laughter lines, crows’ feet, pigmentation are a few other uninvited but still expected guests I would say, who come to settle down with you for good. Everything that people say seem to either hurt you or make you feel small, is an unwarranted feeling, that you can’t most of the times seem to get rid of. You start to analyse your life and don’t find anything you have done in your life worth giving yourself a pat on your back. Every decision ever made by you in the past looks either suspect or bad. Even if everything is fine in your life you are hell bent upon nit picking and find faults with everything. I must say that though these thoughts don’t stay with you forever but such moments keep coming back to you with startling frequency and its scary if your life in reality doesn’t have any problem as such. I think if we have more open conversations about this stage in a woman’s life, both amongst us women and with men, navigating thorough it could become easier. We might not have to explain every time we are indifferent, uninvolved or disinterested in something or may be snap at someone in that moment when we are feeling the lowest in our lives. We all know that this too shall pass and when women feel assured that there is nothing wrong with them it would be an empowering thought. The fact that everyone is actually going through something makes you feel that you are not alone and don’t have to feel bad or guilty about the state of mind that you are in. People around you in the family and friends could become your support system and with their understanding and empathy life could become a wee bit simple in these years.

Why don't we speak up and get involved?

What is the meaning of development and progress? Where are we headed as a country, as a system, as a community, are some questions that refuse to leave me. I am at an age where looking after aging and ailing parents is one of the most important tasks that I do almost on daily basis apart from dealing with my own aging. So, I end up interacting with many doctors, specialists who are supposedly the best, in their respective fields. Not long ago I also got an opportunity to look in to a legal matter (I am a qualified lawyer) that my family was fighting for many years after their land was compulsorily acquired for a national highway. To my dismay, when I opened the file, I figured that we were fighting in a forum that has ceased to have jurisdiction long back and none of the parties involved either knew or cared enough. When I brought this up with our lawyer, the gentleman was appalled himself and was cursing the presiding officer for being careless, leaving me absolutely dumbfounded at one level. When I was discussing this with some learned friends who know the system, I was told that I could not put the blame on the lawyer as the poor guy apparently does thousands of matters and a mistake of this nature can happen with anyone and that I should not read much in to it and pursue now whatever remedy is available to me . I was also told by many that he is a competent man, which to some extent I also endorse, that there has been a genuine oversight in our case and one can’t really find fault with lawyers as they are not paid well in small towns and there is only so much that anyone can do in a given case. Basically, I was told and made to believe that this incident does not in any way reflect upon our lawyer’s competence or integrity or commitment to our brief. While this discussion was happening, I also chanced upon a discovery in a related issue that many matters are being filed in a court which does not have pecuniary jurisdiction and again to my horror, no one was actually horrified and gave me tens of other examples where things were not happening, the way they should have been. I was given numerous examples of existing laws which are against the principle of natural justice, where existing provisions of law are in flagrant violation of the constitutional mandate of fundamental rights but go unchallenged or are challenged unsucessfully or are awaiting their fate as matters are sub-judice. Matters where our Supreme Court acknowledges that justice warrants change in the law but refuses to intervene on the basis of technicalities despite almost having a carte blanche under Article 142 of the Constitution of India to do complete justice. This power can surely be invoked when at the receiving end are hapless farmers and people whose land is being compulsorily acquired under the state’s power of eminent domain and people are left with no right of an effective judicial remedy. A case where unreasonable classification has been made on the basis of the purpose for land acquisition and when the same is being acquired for national highways people are left high and dry, at the mercy of revenue officials for getting a fair and just compensation without getting even a single opportunity where judicial mind is applied on the merits of the case. Essentially the point I am trying to make is that no one seems to get alarmed or even surprised when matters of such nature are brought to the attention of people who understand the system and everyone in fact on the contrary tries to justify the lapse or error or negligence or whatever one wants to call it depending upon their perspective. I am a qualified lawyer, so could figure out the lapse and legal infirmity in our matter but I shudder to think of all those who have no choice but to go with and blindly follow the lawyers that they hire. I do not think that once a lawyer has taken a brief , insufficiency of fees or overload of work can be pleaded as a reason to justify for not being able to pay adequate attention to the matter according to my understanding, whatever it is worth. I don’t think it would be entirely ethical to say that what I am doing is all that is humanly possible especially if what is being done is not adequate and leads to undue delay, legal lapses and eventually denial of justice. This was a system that I had some clue about so could intervene. The following experience shows my plight and helplessness, where I am stuck in an alien system. We live in a part of the country where tertiary medical care is not quite available. Covid has done a big favor to all people living in these semi urban, rural and remote areas of the country as the specialists in the cities have started doing tele consultations and therefore are available and accessible to people not living in the cities. I could get my father the very best medical advice because of this facility of tele consultation. However, I also ran in to some trouble when one doctor, whose advice is critical for my father’s well-being and who we need to consult as and when there is a situation, told me that since he looks after 5000 patients it’s not possible for him to be available or accessible all the time. I felt heartbroken, utterly helpless and also angry. It reminded me of the poor lawyer I mentioned about earlier, who since was doing thousands of cases, couldn’t humanly be expected to be one hundred percent sure in every case about his own efforts, sincerity and commitment. The fact that the people in small towns are not willing to pay their lawyers what lawyers think they deserve, people don’t realise that they unwittingly have relinquished the right to be represented to the best of the lawyer’s ability. The clients are getting in a situation where they have to be satisfied with whatever best the super-busy lawyer can do in the given circumstances. I was in an identical situation again but here I was talking about my father, his health, his well-being, his life and I couldn't be satisfied with only what the super busy doctor could offer me due to lack of time on his part. I needed to be able to reach him when it was needed without any ifs and buts. I wanted to turn around and request this doctor gentleman that maybe he could start to charge more (he was already every expensive) and see instead 2500 patients and be accessible or available to them in time of emergency. Wouldn’t that be a better deal for everyone and make all the patients feel safe and secure? I couldn’t muster courage to propose that as I knew I ran a very real risk of being thrown out which I could ill afford, given the situation I was in. What I don’t get is the compulsion these people (whatever profession, I am discussing just two as I am dealing with these two systems on daily basis) have to take on more work than is humanly possible? Another thing which is absolutely beyond my comprehension is the acceptance by us mere mortals of these people being super busy therefore put up with whatever is doled out. The third point I keep mulling over is as to why doesn’t the system intervene? Are we not shortchanging everyone in the process? We know we have the capability to deal with a problem, a situation, but due to paucity of time we do not do justice to them. As a result, delay in imparting justice, miscarriage of justice and fatalities due to lack of access to timely medical advice is common but the victims aren’t there to tell their tales. We all have accepted the way the system works and if anyone even raises a voice he or she is called either utopian or an entitled, privileged fool. I think intervention also becomes a little tricky for the government as our government hospitals are overflowing with patients and reeling under shortage of doctors, wherever one might go. We expect our government doctors to work 24 hours in a day. I have seen first-hand situation even in AIIMS, the most prestigious hospital in the country and it’s the same in all OPDs across the country I am given to understand . Every time I go to a government hospital I can’t sleep for a few days, as the doctors over there are always almost mobbed despite which most of them work tirelessly. Most of them are kind, show empathy and see as many patients as they can. They are delivering despite the systemic flaws. When I go to the courts, judges are burdened with the herculean task of doing hundreds of matters a day. If justice is expected then we are assuming that both the judge and the lawyers of both parties have read the files and done their homework. I personally feel that it’s not humanly possible for anyone to do that kind of reading relentlessly day after day after day. As a result, the quality of work suffers and justice gets diluted or even denied . When the system expects these doctors and judges to work incessantly 24x7, with what moral authority can it even think of regulating how much work can private doctors or lawyers do so that the services they provide do not become deficient in any form. What is the idea of having a fundamental right to access to justice, to speedy justice and to health, if the systems meant to enforce these rights are not adequately equipped and themselves are overworked and overstretched beyond imagination. The state of our access to justice and access to health care services would obviously continue to suffer till we strengthen these systems and we the people will always be shortchanged. What do we do with progress, development if we can’t fix these basic services? I am not expecting a perfect system, all I am hoping for is a system where human life and dignity is valued for everyone with equality, as our constitution professes to ensure. If a person of my socio-economic strata and intellectual capital can feel lost and betrayed am sure most of the people in this country are feeling worse. Why don’t I hear enough hurt, wounded voices clamoring for better systems? The system needs to address these problems comprehensively at all levels and this is going to take consistent commitment, efforts and resources for many years. We need to make sure we produce adequate number of well qualified doctors every year and for that we need to have world class medical colleges’ infrastructure, commensurate with the population of this country, world class medical school teachers, funds and technology apart from intent. Efficient, effective regulatory system in place is a must to ensure the medical education is world class and quality is not compromised. We will have to need to fix our primary and secondary education also so that the system is fed by appropriately equipped students when they enter the professional colleges. We need to fix the quality of teaching, have dynamic secular, scientific curriculum. We need effective, accountable execution at every level to translate the desire in to an outcome. We need to fix our judicial system, have more judges appointed at all levels. Make the system of appointment of judges at all level merit based and transparent so that the independence of the system can be ensured. We have to make sure we have enough judges at all levels so that the quality of justice dispensation is not compromised. We have to regulate legal education also more efficiently so that the quality of lawyers joining the system is by and large the same coming from different institutions. Alternate dispute resolution mechanisms have to be made more reliable and efficient on the ground also. On the paper they are efficacious, fast and effective but in reality they are also turning out to be another burial ground for disputes. Lots of things on our platter which need fixing, till then can we as citizens please up our game to increase our collective empathy, sensitivity and accountability? Can we, the people, in the meantime, who have the wherewithal to make a difference, start by making small changes? Can we, all of us, become more engaged as a citizen, as a member of the community we live in and show more sensitivity and empathy? Making money and making more money cannot be the only pursuit of life for people who are well educated and well placed in life. I am sure, if we all do our bit, the society and the system would reflect that sensitivity and empathy and we can at least last without getting harmed and damaged till systemic structural changes are made by the state.