Women in the kitchen

It’s about 5:00am in the morning; the pet dog of the house wakes up from his deep sleep, not groggy at all, instead up and charged for his morning stroll in the garden downstairs, for that he needs to wake up his owner with his drools and licks.

But she anyway would have woken up, like she had been waking up for past 25 years to make breakfast for every member of the house diligently, just like an army rule at sharp 7:00am, nicely done, hot breakfast is always ready to be served on the table.

Arzu was the middle child, in the family of 4 siblings living with their parents and a grandmother.

She was born premature at the time of birth, had congenital myopia and possibly infected with bacterial meningitis.

Whatever happened she was unable to obtain any formal education and always remained that timid, introverted home bound individual who anyway had to learn house chores to survive, as her other two sisters somehow managed to finish their high school and completed their post graduation degrees, and started working 9-5 to make the ends meet of the house. 

Arzu was a fine looking woman of average height and physique, she was neither too thin nor plump looking, she mostly remained quiet and observant and only converse when spoken to. She always wished to go out for sightseeing, to gorge on street foods and was more interested in spending time with her pet; she had tamed all sorts of pets from every kind of birds, cats and dogs.

As years passed Arzu became prey of her own trap, all of chores became too monotonous, her dignity and her worth started questioning her existence, she wanted to feel free, she wanted to go out and see and discover this world for herself, she wanted to let go of this imprisonment which was kitchen to her or may be her fear and lack of self believe.

She did not get married as she chose to serve her parents and her family. She never befriended anyone as such and had never interacted with someone enough to get interested in the opposite gender or vice versa, her associates were only her folks, pets and the house help, and just like her other sisters she remained single all her life. 

She started getting ill with sporadic complaints of backache, headache, menopausal symptoms, attention seeking behavior, psychotic attacks, lack of willingness to live, apathy, and lethargy. So finally her sisters decided to take her to a therapist and she was started on anti depressants and advised cognitive behavioral therapy.

Is that, what has become an ultimate solution to such issues? What is the ideal way to live a life then?

                            

There are gazillion of women who go through different kind of tortures and situations in their lives, whether it is our house help, who regularly shows up to clean our homes, to provide to their family as their husbands could not earn enough, or a working woman who has to fight against the patriarchal mindsets or peer pressure on daily basis.

It’s not that only women has to deal with such circumstances only, I know men going through worse of the situations, and it is so damn difficult for them to express such issues with their families, because showing their vulnerability will make them not man enough to maintain the dignity of being called a man.

Then how do we survive all our lives? Just by pretending, is that the only way out? Is it? Why can’t we as ‘Human beings’ just start to live naturally and consciously rather than pretending to be who we are not. Are we running after to achieve financial security, prestige and fame so badly, that we in this strenuous process of making ourselves appear normal in the eyes of our elders and our society, ending up losing ourselves completely?

‘Women in the kitchen’ is a quirky analogy which highlights the feeling of despair, agony and confinement in the depths of our thoughts, and our unexciting monotonous routine, which beyond a point propel us to look beyond complacency, and to free ourselves, from the imprisonment of our own made up ideologies, old fashioned questionable society created norms, and the lifestyle which we have been forced to live.