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It is a given that women, even if working, have to take care of domestic responsibilities in addition to their paid job while for men, such tasks are conveniently taken care of by their wives.
Work, work, and more work. Work defines my life.
If there’s one axis around which my life revolves, it has to be my job. I have been working from a young age and have been working in my current job for the last twelve years.
My job as a State Service officer involves frequent transfers along with a lot of travel. In the last twelve years, I had four postings across four different districts. Some of these postings have been to places too far away from my home to commute daily.
While men working in similar positions had quite a demand in the marriage market, I often came across the comment that women with such job profiles “won’t get a good match” or that they are “unsuitable for domestic life”.
It is a given that women, even if working, have to take care of domestic responsibilities in addition to their paid job while for men, such tasks are conveniently taken care of by their wives. So while men with well-paid government jobs have the luxury to choose their partners from a bevy of prospective brides, women are mostly deprived of such kind of privilege.
I realised this hard truth when my parents began searching for a suitable groom for me more than a decade back.
Then I met my ex-husband.
He seemed quite a progressive man who was of the opinion that like men, every woman should also work, earn and focus on her career. He also held that child-rearing was not solely a woman’s responsibility. And if due to the demanding nature of her job, his wife was unable to do it single-handedly, he would happily shoulder the responsibilities of parenting.
I was happy to get married to such a liberal man. But it didn’t take me long to figure out that beneath the façade of all his progressiveness, was an orthodox, insecured man who didn’t know how to deal with his wife on equal terms.
By the time I got married, I had already been accustomed to living independently, thanks to my far-away postings. Add to that, I had an independent streak in me. I don’t know whether this is an inborn trait or something I developed due to the choice of my career. But I always found any sort of forced compromises difficult to make. For me, the utmost priority was always my own mental peace and happiness. And it was only after my marriage that I realised that the frequent transfers to far-away places were actually a blessing in disguise. At least, it made me stay away from pesky in-laws for most of the time.
A marriage where staying together under one roof seemed more like a punishment than a blessing, can’t last long. Mine, too, crumbled too soon. And, with a start, I realised that I actually felt free once I was single again.
To me, a demanding job which requires a lot of travel is a bliss. If people think that this would lead to neglecting family responsibilities or dearth of good matches, who cares?
In retrospect, I have serious doubts whether this “lack of good matches” is a good thing or bad. In a society where women are mostly confined to a life of domesticity out of compulsion and their freedoms curtailed considerably, a demanding job can prove to be the only way to gain freedom.
Image source: a still from the series Made in Heaven
An engineer by education, I am a civil servant by profession. A doting mother. An avid reader. I try my hand at writing as and when ideas tussle inside my head. read more...
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Being a writer, Nivedita Louis recognises the struggles of a first-time woman writer and helps many articulate their voice with development, content edits as a publisher.
“I usually write during night”, says author Nivedita Louis during our conversation. Chuckling she continues,” It’s easier then to focus solely on writing. Nivedita Louis is a writer, with varied interests and one of the founders of Her Stories, a feminist publishing house, based in Chennai.
In a candid conversation she shared her journey from small-town Tamil Nadu to becoming a history buff, an award-winning author and now a publisher.
Nivedita was born and raised in a small town in Tamil Nadu. It was for schooling that she first arrived in Chennai. Then known as Madras, she recalls being awed by the city. Her love-story with the city, its people and thus began which continues till date. She credits her perseverance and passion to make a difference to her days as a vocational student among the elite sections of Madras.
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