“Have you figured out what it means to be a woman?” I look at Aama (mother), her slightly wrinkling eyes, the adornment on her nose, and the tika between her eyebrows.
I have been asking these questions lately—to myself, to the women around me, to the women who seem to know the answer, to the women who pretend to know the answer. I had never asked the question to Aama.
Usually, we talk about how I like fried Parwal for dinner and have forbidden her to cook it otherwise. Some days, we talk about books that she reads, the kind of character that inspires her, the linguistic magic that moves her. Some days, we talk about how we never take vacations and how this Dashain is the one time we have to go somewhere as a family. Most days are filled with complaints.
“You did not finish your meal properly.” “For once, fix your bed without me telling you to.” “Don’t be such a spendthrift. Save money!” and “How will you ever live without me?”
All my fondest memories with my Aama are bittersweet: a tad bit of love, a weeny little fret, lots of life advice, and even more of tsk tsk tsk.
But we never had the chance to just sit down and talk about what it means to be a woman.
I have read feminist writers explain it to me word by word. I have heard advocates fight for it. But what did the woman I knew even before I came into this world think about womanhood?
“Why are you bothering me in broad daylight?” She looked at me, brushing off a few grey strands of hair that blocked her eyes.
“Aama, let’s talk sometime.”
“All you do is talk. Look at your wardrobe. Don’t come asking me where your green pants are tomorrow.”
My Aama is the life of a room in any gathering. She is always beaming, always the one with the lame jokes. Her outlook on life has never been dull. However, every time I push her beyond “normal” conversations, she seems to build a wall.
It is not that she has not taught me anything—she does it in silence. Whenever I panic over the slightest inconvenience, she gives me the simplest yet most rational answers. Whenever I come home tired, angry, and frustrated, she gives me the space I crave. She has single-handedly taken care of two daughters—to feed them, raise them, support them, embrace them, and hold them.
Yet the words never get enunciated.
I remember being 13 or 14 and watching Sushmita Sen answer her Miss Universe 1994 question: “What is the essence of being a woman?”
The winning answer always rang through my head. To show a man what loving, caring, sharing is all about. Is that the essence of being a woman? Well, it made her win the coveted title. I used to think maybe that was it—a beauty queen stamped the answer.
I always looked at my Aama and saw her have a very conventional life as a woman—what society dictates it to be: raise kids, stay home, domesticate.
Yet she never let those shackles strangle me.
“I don’t want to get married.”
“First, learn to wash your socks. Marriage is not in the cards any time soon,” she would say.
She took care of her in-laws when she could have easily chosen not to. She chose to stay home when she could have easily opted out. She cooks and cleans, exercises and writes. There is nothing abnormal about the frontiers of womanhood that my Aama drew for herself.
“Are you a feminist, Aama?”
“Feminists cook their own meals. Learn to cook one meal for yourself, and I will tell you.”
Her answers are never direct, never precise—always full of metaphors, riddles, idioms. You have to read between the lines, dig between the sighs, and look for the truth in the stack of indirectness.
“I don’t have a room of my own. You always have to come into my room, don’t you?”
Every time I disturb my mother when she is writing, she complains. She wants to breathe sometimes. Her fingers slowly type words in Preeti font. The speed with which she cuts parwal in chulesi without even looking is completely opposite to the way she types. She looks at the keyboard—every letter, every key, every click is calculated. Every click holds meaning. She is not used to technology. She is not a digital native. But she learns and adapts, like she adapted when she had to shift to a home that was not her own.
“Go do Aarati today. Tell God to give you Buddhi,” She looks at her shrine and taunts me sometimes.
“Aama, I am an atheist.”
My Aama did not have answers to many of my questions or my disagreements. She was a woman of a different generation. Yet I wanted to know what her thoughts on womanhood were.
“Do you see yourself being a grandmother someday?”
“Are you planning to elope?”
“Why not? I might elope and adopt a child.”
“Liberate yourself first.”
“But I am free. Are you?” I ask her.
My mother wrinkles her forehead. Little hills like Chure grow between her eyebrows.
“A woman has to be free. From within. From what defines her. From what limits her. From what destroys her. From what builds her. A woman has to learn when to hold on and let go. A woman has to surrender and conquer. A woman has to bleed and break, build and become. A woman has to be free.”
“But are you free, Aama?”
“The world has never let me be.”
“Why?”
She looks at the persimmon tree outside, its branches brushing against our windowpane.
“I am like this tree. The branches long to wander, but the roots hold them back. The leaves stretch to explore, yet the trunk must stand still. Rooted, reaching, but never leaving.”
As she oils my hair with Bhringaraaj oil before I take a bath, she tells me, “Take good care of your hair.”
“I am thinking of going bald.”
“Do it. But while you have hair, take care of it.”
Every morning, when I leave my messy, unkempt bed, she shouts, “Neem Karoli Baba says those who leave their beds unmanaged will have an unmanaged life.”
I don’t know what my Aama thinks of being a woman. I have never known. She has led me to believe that a woman is just a name, a tag. You could call an apple an orange if you want—nothing would change.
But she has shown me what being beyond a woman is like. How womanhood is making compromises but also handling consequences. Womanhood is taking responsibility but also handling the wreckage. Womanhood is a cocktail of emotions. Womanhood is preaching and praying but also daring and doing. Womanhood is wailing and whispering but also weaving and withstanding.
It is a process. It is a journey.
“Aama, am I woman enough?”
She touches the persimmon tree outside.
“Woman enough? Look at this tree, child. You are its leaves. Reaching, daring, unstoppable.”
“But I feel like being a tree is not enough.”
“Then be the forest and the forest fire!”
She picks up her broom and starts cleaning the staircase.
As I look at her doing the most mundane tasks with absolute sincerity, I feel like maybe that is it! That is being a woman.
