A smile like Ours!

There was a movie I watched many years back, I think while I was still in college.. ‘A smile like yours’ or something similar. I can google and find the correct description but I really want to take a trip down the memory lane instead of google making me correct my memories. 

So all I remember is that this was early days of cable tv, the tata skys of the world had not arrived then but we had the usual Star Movies and HBO available. I think it had Greg Kinnear in it and I am actually forgetting the name of the actress. It was a beautiful movie on infertility and relationship. 

This is not a blog post on infertility. You will be surprised to know what I will be writing about, however. Anyway, so you know how it is that few movies just stay with you. I don’t remember watching the movie second time around but it just stayed with me. So, many years later, while still married, as a couple my ex-husband and I were very similarly placed. To the extent that sometimes I felt that I manifested the movie in my life. I doubt, however, that is ever possible. May be it was just there to tell me that when your relationship is strong and love is there, you survive everything. Or maybe the regular ‘wear and tear’ of marriage can be catastrophic.

However, today’s blogpost is about something else. I have finally brought myself around to read ‘Atlus Shrugged’ by Ayn Rand. I try to take out 15-20 mins every morning and read bit-by-bit every day. So there is this para that caught my attention in the early chapters of the book.

For those of you who may have read it, Dagny while walking back from work late one night, stops at the newsstand to pick up cigarettes in the Taggart Terminal. There,. the owner of the newsstand tells her how he has seen people change in twenty years. How earlier they were running with a purpose in life, but now they run out of fear. And interestingly, and what caught my imagination, was, when the newsstand owner says, ‘how they smile too much…’

So now I guess one can make out why the title of the blog post is this. A smile like ours or should I say the lack of it. How many of you have noticed this? Or does it bother you on days that there is a total lack of niceties? I mean even in customer services, it is rarely that you can hear the smile through the phone. I am telling you its not ancient history, there was a time when you could genuinely hear it. It was not, come-to-the-point business but of exchanging genuine pleasantries.

I have this habit of smiling at strangers. Could be anyone, the garbage man who comes to pick garbage in the morning, or a total stranger at gym or just any random kid in the car next to mine. Well! I feel it brings happiness in my life and when a person smiles back at me, I am sure some positivity gets transferred. Oh BTW, this smile is not the flirtiest one but a genuine human-being to human-being kinds. Any kind of misinterpretation is wrong.

Of late I have noticed that I have stopped smiling. Sometimes, it is because people keep walking around with a sullen face, may be because they are sullen because life got them or may be to show that they have a definite sense of purpose. What is that purpose, I have no interest in knowing either.  Keeping a poker face is not going to brighten anyone’s day. 

Although many a times I see a lot of people smile back very forcefully. I am guilty of it too. It just reinforces that Hey! I still believe in the niceties but I just lack the energy to return a genuine one right now, can you please live with my fake one until then? I believe a lot of people can understand it but the trouble is with those who will judge you for being fake, like hell yeah! the purpose of my life is to brighten up yours.

There are things that go wrong, terribly wrong. I have been told of late that I look sick. I will be surprised if I don’t look the part. I have a long list of things that are going completely wrong but I am still doing my bit of showing up every single day and yes! I am still smiling, fake or not. All I am saying here is, recession is here and we may not have many reasons to smile anymore, but can we still smile. If not out of sheer happiness, then out of common courtesy, humming jagjit singh’s tum itna jo muskura rahe ho in our head!

I dont want to be a mother. BTW, Happy Mother’s Day!

Once upon a time, I wanted to be a Mom. That’s how all the fairytales begin, right. With those four words, ‘Once upon a time’. So did mine. Married at 24 years, I had no big dreams. It was a simple life, married to a man in an arranged marriage setup, the idea was to live in the joint family, take care of in-laws, have babies and raise them as proper human beings, also to have a career which could be juggled in between all of this. And I was nearly there, except for the babies. 

For a very long time, I would drown down the guilt that God must think I am a bad person or maybe it is my past karma because of which I couldn’t be a mom. My sister and I have married 4 days apart and she was blessed with Anadita within the first year of marriage whereas we (my husband and I) were not. The thing about Indian relatives is that from the very next day of being married, everyone will ask you ‘koi good news hai kya’ (Is there any good news?) and initially you blush, then after few months, you say ‘soon’ and then you end up avoiding them. We did not know when the ‘soon’ would arrive so only one of us would attend functions giving the other a respite.

Countless visits to doctors and after innumerable procedures, three operations and hundreds of hormonal injections later, we were standing at the same place, barren. Obviously, now the creepy questions of relatives pertaining to ‘good news’ had shifted to ‘helpful suggestions by naming different doctors’ and miracle stories of people who had children after 20 years of marriage. But, we had nothing. Every month I was disappointed to have aunt Flo visit me. The ovulation kits, the timing and then the sadness and depression when you see only one line on the stick, thinking that maybe the second line was visible (howsoever faintly). 

The story from there was downhill, constant fights, door slamming, and then silence. That silence was engraved with sobs and tears. And then more of silence till we reached a stage where there was nothing to talk. We were civil and that was it, the civility survived but the relationship died. 

This led me to this. I don’t want to be a mom. Not anymore.

You may call me selfish because you may think that I still have many good years ahead of me and then you will tell me the story of this friend of yours, who had a child at 40 years and is so happy and they have a perfect family picture. Or you may advise me, why don’t you adopt? You will give a beautiful life to an orphan child and do so much good for society. Or you may tell me that I can get married to a widower or someone who already has kids so you don’t have to have kids. Well! I say BLAH! I don’t want to be an old mom. If your friend had one at 40, good for her. I am happy for her. I don’t want to adopt a child because I am not sure if I will be able to do the unconditional love bit or be a good mom. I don’t want to be an absentee mom or adopt a child for the sake of adopting. And no I don’t think I will marry someone with or without a child, anytime soon. So, by all means, please call me weird or immature.

No, I don’t hate kids. I already had the names of my kids decided, you know! I had everything planned except that I did not have kids to fulfil those plans nor do I intend to have kids anymore to have those plans fulfilled. I love kids. In parties, you would often find me helping young moms with their kids. I attend to all birthday parties; I know everything that a mom is going through. I know about post-partum depression. I know how you should hold a baby, I know how to put them to sleep, which lullaby to be sung to them, I know how to prepare baby bottles, I know how to warm the milk, how to make sure that the baby burps. I know how to change diapers. I know how to take a girl to her ballet class, the best washrooms and I know how to get them to do homework or teach them their lessons. I can even today tell if Anadita has a fever by her eyes or just by touching her and I can tell if she is going to have bad cough a day in advance, just by the ever-so-slight change in her voice. 

Yet, I don’t want to be a Mom. I don’t think I will change my mind. And yes I am scared of dying as a lonely old cat woman. I wake up at nights sometimes and think about my old age. I don’t like pets especially cats because what if someday I die and the cat ends up eating me! 

Coming back to the point, I don’t want to be a mother. I have chosen it now. I did not choose it before, but at 36, I know myself fairly well. I am married to my work and my law firm is my baby. I like to mentor young people who join us, I want to set an example for young women to see that everything is achievable. You can be a first-generation anything if you are willing to put in hard work. And yes, it is completely OK to choose not to be a mom. You are not selfish or a coward or any less of a woman. You are on your own timeline and this is your life. 

I come from a family where my great grandmother, my grandmother, my mom, my sister have all been working and have raised beautiful intelligent kids. I have seen them struggle and I know their stories. I have always felt that being a mother is a gift of God. And God couldn’t be present everywhere so s/he decided for all of us to have our Mom. I AM BLESSED TO HAVE A MOM LIKE MINE. She, who has believed in me, she who has stood by me every time I have cried, she who helped me to build myself back again, she who has loved me unconditionally and has had sleepless nights thinking how I will live once she is not there. I am blessed truly to have her. And I wish her Happy Mother’s Day! And I wish my sister and all the moms out there a Happy Mother’s Day.

To those of us who are similarly situated, you may or may not be a mom, and either way, it’s ok. You have to work on your timeline, you have to work on your life and you have to make choices that you feel are right and then take full responsibility for those choices. And yes! You can change your mind. Embrace what life has to offer you and make the best of it. You REALLY don’t owe anyone an explanation. I was told yesterday that writing something like this especially today will invite trolling. I guess it will. But, even if one person realises that it is OK to make your own choices, I shall be happy. My job here will be done. Please remember –

Your life, your rules.

Until next time.