Search This Blog

Saturday 31 March 2007

Three Generations of women

Theme for a dream
Punam Khaira Sidhu

MY grandmother is 80. She lost my grandfather when she was 45 and has since raised and settled seven children, and 15 grandchildren. One might think that she has done her duty and deserves to live life on her own terms. But no; we expect so much of our elders. We expect them to devote their sunset years to helping us to achieve our goals, without ever asking if they too have a dream, pending fulfillment. My grandmother’s life is, selflessly, focussed around our lives. Her days are filled with prayers for our well being, she phones in to ask after all her children and grandchildren, and is always available to help us out of tight corners. Is she happy? I don’t know.

My mother is 60. After we, her three children, left home, she went through a severe case of the ‘empty nest syndrome’. She had been a housewife and kept a beautiful house and garden, and looked forward to my father’s retirement. My dad, thus far refuses to retire. He looks forward to going to work each morning with a bunch of vibrant young men and women. Of late, my mother has come to terms with her circumstances and her emotional needs. She is an active member of her several social clubs and kitties and often plays Mahjong from 9 to 5 with a set of ladies. The house, and garden, are efficiently run but not the focus of her life. She is working towards self-actualisation and tells us not to be judgemental of what she is doing. Dad was alarmed initially and told her that a woman’s place was at home and not as he put it in his Majhail slang, to wander like a guachi gaan (lost cow). Mom laughingly told him that she had always done what was expected of her and now it was time for her to do what she felt like. After all, isn’t that what he did?. Score one for my mom, the enlightened Indian woman awakening to her own aspirations. She deserves to have some fun. Is she happy? She’s getting there.

While observing the changing power equations in my paternal home, I saw the delightful movie Calendar Girls on a DVD loaned from the British Library. The movie, is based on the true story, of the residents of Kettlewell, a small village in the English County of Yorkshire. It tracks the efforts of the local WI (Women’s Institute) members to raise funds for a leukaemia charity by posing for an artistically nude calendar. The movie is heartwarming as it details how the endeavours of the women impact on their families and relationships. The women beautiful in their wrinkles and pearls and far from perfect bodies, find themselves unlikely celebrities. They are even invited to Hollywood, receive lucrative endorsements and collect over 578,000 pounds to fund a new wing of their local hospital and leukaemia research. Later they are back to WI’s boring routine and politics. But each one fulfilled with their fantastic achievement and the fun they had doing it.

After seeing the movie I recommended it to my mother who also works with a cancer charity. I also laughingly suggested that the volunteers could perhaps raise more money through something a little more adventurous than selling greeting cards. The dressing down I received still has my ears burning red.

Whether they recognise their own aspirations and follow them my grandmother and mother are my real ‘Calendar Girls’. My generation would not have tasted the fruits of education, careers and financial freedom without their steadfast support. One can only exhort them from my privileged position to go ahead and paint a picture or learn to sing or dance or even to swim or sky-dive or just go do what they want and have some fun doing it. Because in the end as the Yorkshireman who died of leukaemia and to whom Calendar girls is dedicated said, "Women are like flowers, every stage of their growth more beautiful than the last but the last phase always the most glorious, before very quickly they all go to seed...

HOME PAGE

No comments: