Back in the 80's, for the mums born in the extensive and extensively referred villages of India (which would be most of the mothers, as India back then, still quite comfortably lived in her villages) women empowerment was a parochial concept, and something that was earned gratefully and was not worth taking morchas out for. Modernity was still clad in the Sarees of Indira Gandhi and Sarojini Naidu, whose off colored Sarees they found rather distasteful anyway. Their achievements, while being whole heartedly commendable were still strictly inimitable, like the feats of a Jumbo circus ring master.
So as my mom, walked into the big blinding lights of the city plagued by incessant power cuts, she decided to stick with doing what she did best to cope with darkness like in the villages from whence she had come. Lighting candles.
She took gingerly to the modern gadgetry of the city kitchen, which in those days meant no more than a mixer grinder and a noisy Kelvinator and was only too happy to see the sliding door television box throw out government regulated images. Long before DD started churning out messages with young women stomping around vigorously in the name of girl child empowerment and equality, the desire to watch, weigh and imbibe these messages was replaced by a maternal concern.
Twenty years later, little has changed. This desire to feed and fend for her children is an instinct so strangely prolific, that in an instant you are at home when you visit your good friend's mother you have never seen before. It is an implicit code of honour, a unifying trait that perhaps most womens groups wishing for equality with men wish for. It is a profound statement for the discerning, which ,very wrongly, is seen as an acceptance of defeat by the fighting feminists.
Because, for my mom, it was never a fight and was merely an unintentionally profound statement to make - that without her, life would not be possible.
Thank you Amma.
