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My daughter's response to why she wanted to help me stumped me. She said, 'Because my mother is not a superwoman! She is my mom only!'
My daughter’s response to why she wanted to help me stumped me. She said, ‘Because my mother is not a superwoman! She is my mom only!’
A while ago, my daughter came to me and said, ‘Hey, mom! What are you doing? I want to play with you. Please, let’s play some game today.’
‘No Akshara. I don’t have any time today, you know your bua is coming with her whole family. So please, don’t disturb me,’ I told her.
‘Okay, mamma.’ And a few moments later, she came back to me and said, ‘Mamma, you have lots of work. I think you are tired. If you don’t mind, can I help you?’
I just looked at her and smiled, ‘Oh my little princess! How can you help me?’
Innocently, she said, ‘Don’t worry. I can do everything, you just have to instruct me.’
‘But why do you want to help me?’ I asked her.
Her reply stumped me, ‘Because my mother is not a superwoman! She is my mom only!’
This is Akshara, my five-year-old daughter who is enjoying her vacation at home. She is an only child and thus wants to play with her mother. My daughter is the only one who understands that I am not a Superwoman because no one offers to help me. They all think I can do all the work on my own or rather, that it is only my work.
But before going on, let me introduce myself. I am Sita and I live in a joint family. The head of our family is my MIL Kamla Ji and my husband, Sanjay is her eldest son. I’ve got two younger brothers-in-law – Ajay and Vijay who are still in college. And I also have a married sister-in-law who stays in the same city as us.
No one helps me with household chores. According to my MIL, it is my duty and my duty alone. I have to start my day at 5 AM and end it at midnight. Though I often get tired of doing everything on my own, no one understands this. My MIL often says, ‘Humare ghar mein kaam hi kitna hai!’ (There isn’t so much work in the house.) But I’ve never answered back to her since I also believed I was a Superwoman.
However, my daughter taught me that I was wrong. Today, I realised that I am a regular human who gets tired too! So I have decided not to be a Superwoman but to take help from my family. Will they help me?
Do you also think you’re a Superwoman?
Picture credits: Still from Bollywood movie Kahaani 2
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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