When 3 Amazing Women Speak Of The Need To Prioritise Ourselves, We Listen!

Masaba Gupta has launched her own podcast. A fashion designer, an actor and now a podcaster. Each Wednesday a new episode would be released on the Luminary app.

The first episode started with Masaba saying that education does not provide you with all the answers to your life’s problems, your women do. Women who inspire, women who support, female friendships and solidarity, sisterhood. Fifteen episodes for fifteen women she admires, we all admire, with Sania Mirza right at the outset and chef Garima Arora in its second week.

Who wouldn’t agree that female friendships are a life-saver? Who doesn’t call their friends for life-hacks and help in dealing with the heavy machinery of our lives or even petty slip-ups while dredging through the daily routine. ‘How I Masaba’ brings you the little things and the big things that successful women of our culture do, the things and experiences that made them who they are. The first two episodes featured two women who need no introduction. One World Champion in Tennis and another a Michelin star winner, who happens to be the first Indian woman to win this.

The need for women to be selfish

Of all the things the host and her guests shared with the audience, one common refrain was the need to prioritise themselves and their needs. They talked about their careers’ peaks and troughs, winning championships or awards and retiring, the stress and anxiety associated with their work and the euphoria that comes from excelling at it. And one of the biggest reasons they could succeed and keep going through the ups and downs of life is that they pay heed to their needs.

Sania Mirza shared that being self-centred is something that her profession demanded. But while this might be absolutely non-negotiable in the world of sports, this requirement of putting oneself first is a salient practice in any profession, if one wants to do well. And in everyday life, too. Women quite often forget that they not only can afford to think of their needs, but they must. Women must be prioritising themselves because the rest of the world won’t do it for them.

It all begins in our childhood

Right from childhood, girls see their mothers and their female family members sacrificing their basic needs and even their human rights for the sake of their husbands and families. Wives eat only after the male members of the family are done with their meals, their access to the public sphere is severely limited by the extent to which men try to control their lives, and especially their sexuality is policed and restricted. Girls find themselves indoctrinated into this system because very often they don’t know what a life outside the confines of these traditionalist conventions would look like.

Even in liberal, urban households, care-work often falls in the domain of women’s work, often at the cost of their needs. Anything done for oneself or for the sake of their career or happiness is seen as indulgence. In such a culture, identifying and taking exactly what you need is not only radical but also mandatory. Whether it is a diet specifically catering to your requirements as a sportsperson or a fitness regime that keeps you on your toes for the long hours a chef spends in the stressful and ever active environment in the kitchen. Nobody else is going to do it for you.

We have to fight harder than men; makes it more precious!

The two episodes released were wonderful explorations of what turned these women’s careers into success stories. You get a sneak peek into their lives, their struggles and especially what motivated them to keep going and scaling the heights.

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Women have to put in a far greater amount of hard work, time and energy for a mere slice of the recognition even mediocre men accrue. These spaces carved out by women to share, to confide and to inspire, while being sprinkled with copious amounts of laughter and warmth remind us that even in this suffocatingly patriarchal world, women are paying heed to other women. And we need them to.

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