Woman

My opinions

I have many

They are my veil of beauty

Dont you know

Elle M

I was a born a female human baby …. and I grew up to be a girl and then a woman.   I love my body and I have never had any complaints …  not even when I was in throes of menstrual pain.  I wanted to be a mother … not that it was important that I had to carry the child in me.  Becoming pregnant was not the big deal …  being a parent was the main deal.

I went through surgical menopause almost 15 years ago … so biologically I have no “female” organs.  But I am a woman.

What makes me a woman ?

I remember a “showcase” in our typical middle class home, which had all my dolls.  I never played with them.  I loved being outdoors … ambling around my mother’s garden, tasting all the leaves and petals,  chasing butterflies and dragon flies,  watching earthworms, frogs, toads and snails during monsoon season.  I enjoyed playing chor police, ice-pice ( as we said then) , hop skotch  …  never mastered flying a kite but was a great thread handler so I remained in demand.  I loved skating and cycling. Except for a few months of hockey training, I never had any formal sports training …  but played on my school field and in my neighborhood. I have scars and broken bones to show how rough I could be.

I don’t know how I came to know of dance when we had no TV those days , and our family wasn’t anywhere close to the dance world.  But all of 4 years old, I crossed my Lakshman rekha and discovered through a window the world of Bharatnatyam …  fell in love with it . I was thrashed at home on drifting too far and yet I fought hard with my family to learn and perform dance for many a years.  Dance is like meditation to me …  transports me to another realm.

I have done plumbing work, hard labor, bank work, outside work as much as I have done household work in my growing up years.  There isn’t anything I feel I cant do … and I always jump at the opportunity to do new things.  Others have to reel me in reminding me that my age or physique doesn’t allow. 

I love being in pants … and I love draping a saree as much .  I never took to jewelry though.

I love giggling with my women friends and downing a shot with my men friends.

I enjoy if someone opens the door for me … but I love driving my own car.

I love cooking … its therapeutic for me … a stress buster …  an extension of my love to eat , loving to feed.

I have had hip length lovely braids ………… and short “bob” cut  too , just what fancied me at that time.

I enjoy parenting … and I am perhaps the weirdest mom … encouraging my son to do things that traditional moms wouldn’t .  Pardon me for that … he has turned out to be good human being.

I have stood up for women  ….. and men in my office.  Discrimination hits women more, so I had to shout more times for women .

I am fiercely protective of those I love …. And of what I believe in.

I have never said no to a role … and I have often come home at 2 am from work.

Some are scared of me …  and I cant say I fear much.

So now I stand at 54 years and wonder why I am called a woman ?  Is it only the biological aspect ?  Then a “female adult” is more apt. 

Is it the empathy people say I have ?  Or compassion I show ?   Or caring and tending to someone? Does that come from the female chromosomes or from any social construct ? …. I wonder.

When I age more, and get more wrinkled to a point when gender cannot be identified, perhaps then I will be just a human. 

Till then …  happy woman’s day .