Make Time for Yourself

Women, particularly Indian women, prioritize everyone except themselves. They should make time for themselves too.

A couple of months back, my mother called me to wish my son before his end semester Maths exam. “I’m not at home right now, but I’ll call you as soon as I get home so you can wish”, I told her.

“I thought you didn’t work on Sundays.”

“I don’t normally. But I am not at work now. I am with a friend. I’ll call when I get back.”

I got an earful from her that day. Apparently I was failing in my duty as a mother because I prioritized lunch with a friend over brooding at home the day before an exam. No matter how much I tried to explain that the kid didn’t particularly want me hovering around him while he was studying, I couldn’t pacify her. As a mother, I should put the imagined needs of my children over my own desires.

Strangely, the same rule doesn’t apply to the father. nobody expects him to stay home when his children have their exams, and he is given the label of a perfect dad if he does so.

And there lies the problem. Women, especially Indian women, have been conditioned to feel guilty about making time for themselves. Their life is expected to revolve around the family, jobs and societal obligations. Those stolen moments of camaraderie and gaiety are built around useful activities, or socio-religious occasions.

If you want to sit in the soft winter sun and chat with your friends, you take your knitting with you to convince yourself that you are not wasting your time. You want to dress up and dance the night away- wait for Navratri or someone’s wedding so you can do it without guilt.

Women do go out on their own, but those trips are made when they are free from obligations. They happen when their children are at school, or squeezed into the time when their daughters are in their Kuchupudi or tennis classes. Women rarely put aside time for themselves when they are making their schedules.

Today, a friend shared a story of how a close friend of hers passed away two months back. The lady apparently spent every waking moment thinking about the needs of her children, her husband and his parents. On their rare occasions when she went out, she would apparently be summoned by her in-laws because they needed her at home. How might the poor husband be coping, my friend thought, and reached out. She needn’t have worried; he was doing just fine.

The cook was paid a little extra so she did the vegetable shopping too. An attendant had been engaged to take care of the needs of his parents and the children. The lady who passed away had been very quickly replaced by other service providers, and nobody really felt her absence any more.

What made the story particularly poignant was the knowledge that the lady had consistently prioritized the need of the family over her own.

Make time for yourself, my friend advised. However much you try to delude yourself, nobody is indispensable. Watch that movie, go on a coffee date with your friends, apply mehendi, visit your parents. Do things that make you happy, because your happiness should be a priority too.

And yet so few women do that.

Some of it is certainly due to patriarchy. Women are required to conform to certain roles. And those roles require them to be on duty round the clock.

We knew this family that would often drive down to a farmhouse for the weekend with two other families. The men would drink, nibble on snacks, watch TV and play cricket. The children would listen to music, play cricket and stealthily smoke cigarettes. The women would cook, clean and dust. They would pretend to enjoy performing the household chores that their house help would have taken care at home, but those weekend outings were just extra work for them. They would seek their pleasure in gossiping with each other as they prepared the chicken curry, and by the time they settled down with a glass of wine in the evening, they might have almost convinced themselves they enjoyed it.

Most women are so busy performing the roles they have decided for themselves that they have forgotten who they are. Those hobbies they once had. Their passions. The things that made them laugh or smile. All shoved back into the recesses of who they are.

Yet it need not be so. It is time women started reclaiming that which makes them happy. It is time women made time for themselves. It is time women started prioritizing themselves. Women owe it to themselves to be happy.