Asking Mother

The power of permissions! First written with friends in the Ochre Sky writing community.

Disclaimer: I grew up first in Jamshedpur and then in Pune. This essay is based only on my personal experiences. There is absolutely no intention to make any generalizations.

Without a doubt, I was born into a man’s world. We lived in Telco (now Tata Motors) Colony, Jamshedpur, its broad lanes shaded by trees on both sides, showering passersby with leaves and tiny flowers every once in a while, creating little islands of flowers all along the sides of the roads. The men went to work, and the women stayed home, cooked, cleaned, and brought up the kids. That was the way of the world. Little girls grew up and became their mothers. Little boys grew up and became their fathers.

The women may have run their homes, but it was the men who called the shots. Food, clothes, education, entertainment – Ask Father. Want to stay out playing after dark? Ask Father. Need a new notebook? Ask Father. Want a new dress? Ask Father. Ice cream? Maybe just forget it. A cycle with a basket at the handlebars like your best friend got for her birthday? Ask…… err actually don’t even Ask Father about this one!! Not that the fathers were ogres or anything - they were jolly old fellows on Sundays and could take you and your friends for a joyride around the colony in the old Ambassador car and end it with cold drinks at the club. I know that mine took us every year to the circus across the railway lines in Golmuri, at the ground opposite the old church. Nothing I have watched in the forty plus years since then has caused my heart to stop like those grand old circuses with their bands playing foot-tapping music and their acrobats defying death three times a day (1:00 pm, 4:00 pm, 7:00 pm), in their sequined clothes of the brightest pinks, blues, purples and greens.

And so, life as I knew it went on until sixth grade, when I suddenly woke up one morning to find myself on the other side of the world – in Pune. Rudely yanked out of the land of my birth and transplanted there for the foreseeable future due to a job transfer for my father. My first reaction was to decide to be absolutely and desperately miserable for the rest of my life. But once the first flush of depression was over, I looked around and found an alien world that turned my understanding of life-so-far on its head. And I was curious. Yes, the men went off to work here, too. It was the women. It was the women that seemed to be cut from a very different cloth.

I learnt that they were historically brave, warrior women. They had invented the special nine yard ‘nauvari’ saree instead of the usual six yards, and tucked it in at the back, draping it somewhat like a dhoti. And then they had accompanied their men to the battlefield. Nauvari sarees are still lovingly worn on traditional occasions, but the women I saw on the streets wore all kinds of attire and had an air of confidence about them that was new to me. They seemed to spend less time at home and more on their two-wheelers, going to work, running errands, ferrying children here and there, swerving expertly in and out of traffic and giving the men as good as they got in big or small streetside skirmishes.

Most of the ladies in my neighbourhood either worked in offices or ran small businesses out of their homes. A small little lending library, perhaps, or an art class for children. Hot meals for bachelors, or a range of home-made bottled masalas. Besan ke laddoos or puran-polis. Baby clothes or hand-embroidered pillowcases. Something that filled their time as well as their pockets. One of my neighbours ran a day care centre. Because I loved kids, I would go and play with them whenever I could and help her with some little tasks. Sometimes she would give me a meal in return – hot rice and dal with a spoon of ghee, and a dry alu sabzi on the side. Till date, this is one of my favourite comfort foods. This strange sense of freedom, of independence, of living life as an equal partner with your husband seeped slowly into me. I slowly learnt that Asking Father may not always be necessary. Asking Mother should be good enough!

Photographs taken by me in Pune in April 2024.