Musings of a 40 year old

Musings of a Middle Aged Woman

Time flies, I didn’t know when where time flew and I am 40 and enjoying it.

Yesterday, read a most interesting conversation / debate where else but face book because I was directed to it. It was a public post. And, I apologize upfront because I shouldn’t have done, as I wasn’t a party of it. The sentiments were all well meant and so forth.

We actually live in a society where we love to confirm aka the women into the stereotypical traditionalistic sati savitri type of photos imprinted into our minds. We think, and yes this is what the population thinks that we need to mellow down when we hit the 40-age bracket!

Why are woman picked upon? After a decade of catering to the whims of an overgrown boy –turned, husband, raising the 2.2 kids, dealing with work pressures, social expectations, and dealing with life, plus being the supermom, super wife and also balancing the monthly budget, a woman finally heaves a sigh in her 40’s.

If she happens to dress wearing tighter than thou clothes, waving a diamond ring, carrying a fancy schmancy designer bag and tries to lose weight, and subjects herself to kamikaze torture exercise to the metabolism going, whose fault is it?

It’s the media, the advertising, and the bombardment of the svelte body that stares down back at us. If we are dark, we lose the man, if we wear Indian clothes; we are Aunty ji, not modern enough.

Why are we judged upon? If we wear tight jeans with a short shirt, we are displaying ourselves. Imagine if you are in the west, an obese 40 year old woman walks at the road, you don’t say anything but here in India, pura bhashan milta hain!

 Women like me, you, us just want to chill, enjoy and relax the final years before we start counting medicines, and making doctors appointments. Men, themselves, preen about, start buying flashy cars, and pick a hobby like motorcycling in obscenely priced motorcycles, driving up and down the Himalayas for a break.

What about us, Monsieur? Is wanderlust different for us? Just because we have a few grey popping in the parting of our hair we are old, has been; while a man starts to look distinguished!

I so wonder what would be said of me, a village wale, and 40 yr. old mom of two wearing a stalwart suit with grey outnumbering the black who is old in some manners but is a child in some.

I wish when we were growing up along with the do this, do that, sit stand, cry, don’t cry, and don’t ever express one’s mind, be demure, be ladylike (where did they get his one from?)  They would have given us a secret book to be old and to not be young.  Also, the society then labels us feminist jhola type if we express our mind or have an opinion.

In today’s world, which is growing smaller , by the second and where the media infiltration is so subtle ,that it subconsciously imprints our mind to form opinions based upon the bombardment of images that we pre-judge , and preconceive that it becomes difficult for us simple village folk to match up . we are doomed if we wear the Punjabi suit and damned if we wear modern clothes ; have a heart ! the social pressures and intimidation makes us do all this to blend in !

From the Heartland of Punjab ,

Ravneet Sangha.

The After effects

I am a morning person, and before you take this to mean anything else; it just means I have oodles of energy and I love my routine. You know, the morning walk, just soak in nature and marvel and then the famous calming chai, prepared the right way and strangely enough after I’ve checked what’s been happening in the virtual world. It always seems that something must have happened, earth shattering while I was sleeping but nothing ever does. I zone into the morning kirtan that is like a balm and then as the internal clock tunes in I put on the national news.

It’s as simple as breathing and I have it down to a clockwise. You know the first cup goes down quietly with the kirtan and then the second one starts of after giving instructions to the ever- faithful Nikki and then news starts. Imagine, my surprise, I am watching news and it breaks for the advertisement. Trust me, I never pay attention but today I did.

And, it disturbed me. A man is presumably getting ready for a party later in the evening whilst his date and he are chatting on the speaker phone. A bell rings while he has primed himself and she walks in. Before this, he had sprayed himself with some deodorant. The minute the door opens, we see the lady dressed up with her hair up, conservative and she smells the air and him and opens her hair and tells him, shall we go to the party a bit later? The door opens.

Call me old fashioned, traditionalistic, stuck in the 1900’s, it made me laugh and wonder what is the world coming to. A multi- national is seducing its customers to use its product while promoting and promising sexual favors.

I wish it were so easy to fool us women! And, then the next clip went to the devastation in Kashmir floods.

I feel as if society has changed its standards to such an extent that we are insensitive to what happens around us till it happens to us.

The extent of commercialization of the needs and the wanton display on media has made us prey to the needs of these so called beauty products with which we would feel confident , desirable and more attractive. It’s just not limited to deodorants, it starts with the hair on our delectable heads to the creams to look fair and lovely and to the clothes we wear. Use a particular shampoo and sweep the love of your life banishing away the dandruff, use a particular cream, and become fairer and sickly white to win beauty contests, get a groom to marry you (who had earlier rejected you ). Imagine not being fair makes you not get a job, not win admiration, makes you the subject of every joke in town. And, then if you don’t wear the trendy clothes how many of you are called bhenji or bhaiya .

Increasingly, the society is defining what ‘we ‘ should look like ! Be it the hawai chappal that has changed its image with Hrithik wearing it, using John’s face wash to become fair and to carry a smart phone to impress and win the girl in the club. And, to top it, wear the particular deodorant , you can land her straight to bed.

I think, I’m parenting my boys wrong, what use is an education or values or striving to be a free -thinking balanced individual where the value of a human being is based on the color of his looks, the fair-o- meter and the car he drives.

The after affects of this scent are multiple and when I quizzed my kids who belong to the under- privileged section they all said they use the 2re sachets and five rs cream to look white. The glistening faces, powdered and primped all reflect a color conscious complexed tomorrow. Till, we change, the afternoon news still carried a fluttering sari clad woman humming a tune and being led like the mice in Pied Piper to her lover.

The higher ground

Every day the sun comes up, we are faced with infinite options, choices to make, and paths to follow that ultimately set the journey for us. Today after, evening class, a young girl came up to me, shy at first and then she hung her head down in sadness and starter crying softly and then big loud sobs. I asked her what had happened; that she was crying so much. She replied that her mother had suffered a heart attack and she had no one to turn to as her father was working in Oman and the money doesn’t come every month, but after three months. She had no one to turn to.

 I told her to come with her mother s reports, because I knew that she needed to be calmed down and I needed to make the call whether to give in or not. A family friend had given me the best advice to follow; he had said to always take the higher ground and to follow one’s heart. Well, it was evening, time and even if the sun beats fearlessly during the day, dusk falls swiftly and sharply in the villages. During my evening chores, I kept on thinking about her and her mother and what if I didn’t give the money her mother would go worse? On the other hand, one part of me kept on saying No, maybe she is making a fool out of you because how can she be alone?

However, I gave in and helped her monetarily and when I looked at the reports, it was a case of high blood pressure with lots of tests written on it. We all have our inner voice and we need to just listen to it. Let it live, let it breathe, it sure leaves a fuzzy warm feeling and you know about money well, it always will come back!The scriptures say we should do our karma and not count our results.

The smile in Nisha’s eyes and her gratitude well cant is explained. Of course, a lot of you will think I’m a sucker for sob stories, broken wings. Yes, I am.

Spoilt Tweens !! invasion in India

We live in an age where the world is spinning faster and faster, we all want instant gratification and we want it now or in some cases before the actual moment. As a mother of a teenager and a young adult, I have come to realize the mantra is getting things right now. Technology available to us is delivering fast results. This means we are accustomed to getting what we want at our fingertips. Disposable Income means we are buying things instantly without having to budget, save and to buy later. Today’s teen is a spoilt child, who wants things and with the external bombarding of clever marketing that scores in the product again and again the kid is convinced that he or she cannot survive without the product. A whole new wide world is available to them, and they are not shy of voicing their opinion. .

Once upon a time, children were seen and not meant to be heard, parents were the masters of the house, and youngsters did what they were told to do. But slowly, and slowly the power balance is changing and it has shifted to them subtly. A new study shows 7-14 years have more power on their parents than before. . More than half of them confess that they are influenced by what their children want in the manner of groceries, what they want to eat. Children also say they want the ‘it’ product of their times where the possession of that personalize/ bespoke product will singularly set them apart and set them apart from their peers. Societal pressures dictate how they should dress, what to wear what to do and how to behave, the way they should speak. Marketing hype demands and states the law for the teenagers to have that it product.

Kids dictate what laptop to buy, mobile phone to carry.

56% of the kids want instant gratification and they want to spend their time on their virtual umbilical cord connection to the www. You never know, what one may miss when they were talking or heaven forbid conversing with the family, someone might have just posted a status update.

This generation is called the dumbest generation. It is a paradox of the times- we have the maximum advantage of education, learning political action, cultural activity, but also on the same hand instead of using the world wide web to learn as a center of knowledge we are using it as a place of gossip, follow pop culture, relentlessly keeping up with ever shifting lingua- franca of being school / college.

Social life is the most tempting to and to miss out is the most painful. This peer- to –peer activity is worrisome, as it stifles one, kids seek out what they want, want it fast, and with minimum effort.

They do so with bad spellings, civic illiteracy and a complete disregard of family and endless postings of trivia. Educators, parents need to not ignore this down ward spiral, and they need to check this only by checking themselves. How many times, have you while the commercial comes, started surfing the net meaninglessly?

We can get students to raise the bar, delay their gratification, by being there for them to begin with for starters. It’s all about parenting , and we need to take a leaf from our parents lives . Children must be taught how to think, and not what to think. Margaret Mead.

Happy Happy Birthday India!

Happy Happy Birthday India!

Finally a day to rejoice to remember what it means to be utterly butterly free in this amazing incredible country. Please no moaning and groaning about what all is wrong and be the eternal pessimist and a Dukhi Atman. Just feel good stories if you please. My school kids, made small flags, and one innovative girl made a bird and like a twig the flag was in the beak.

When asked on what else, Face Book the holy grail of our lives, I got lot of positive answers and a greater number of likes. The answers were many but all of them focus on India being a diverse country and the fact that it totally is in sync as one. We hear horror stories and we are upset about roads, development and the roti kapda makan spiel.  But the week before the Independence Day, the entire nation is in the grip of patriotism. And, whatever way to wear the flag, but to have it displayed as the newest identity – the display picture window aka DP. The statuses are all about saare jahan se acha and we all speak as one. The best part of the whole scenario, I feel are the NRI’s who all have a part of mera India in them, sitting millions of miles away, who have carved their identity abroad but still yearn for ‘home’.  A top cardiologist in NY says’

What's NOT to like? Hain??? Prose AND poetry in English, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu. Music classical AND filmy. Movies parallel and commercial. The varied topography of hills Valleys Rivers deserts forests. The varied culinary feasts. The history, art and otherwise. The melting pot of religion or perhaps the boiling cauldron that gave birth to Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists and sanctuary to Zoroastrian and Parsis and Jews . . . Mera Bharat Mahan. Yan perhaps mera nahin perhaps tera Bharat Mahan…

In fact , on this happy birthday of my desh , the recurring theme with a lot of my friends is the fact that we have so many different  and yummilicious cuisines, nowhere in the world does one find such a vast and varied food choice .

The greatness of India is that we all survive in this diversity , individual , unique but so distinctly the same, comforting and one in a country that is  marked with contrasts starting from topography , to language, to food, to religion and mannerisms. But , something clicks in this country of mine where one passion of cricket makes us crazy fans all rooting, praying in 28 languages to score that last sixer!

Yes, we have our faults , we have our failings but this one ki chidiya still attracts and beguiles, enraptures the world even if you might put it down. The only thing we can do after hitting rock bottom is to go upwards and reach the zenith in the sky . As, they say hope sustains life and what ever better example in a pulsating, vibrant 1.2 billion strong country .

Jai Bharat.