The Woman I Never Knew

The scent of tea always announced my mother before she even entered a room. For twenty-two years, that scent, often mixed with that of the curry salan she had been making, along with the rustle of her traditional cotton kameez shalwar, was the boundary of my world.

Why can't she, for once, dress a little modern, wear some good makeup, or wear heels like all the other women in the neighborhood? For once, just for once, I wanted to feel proud, or maybe just not embarrassed in front of my friends and those boys I had a crush on.

But no, she never would. And to top it off, she would speak in Punjabi - let alone Urdu - in front of them. Why would she do that when she was perfectly capable of speaking good Urdu?

With this background I had naturally always thought of my mother as a modest, traditional woman. Or at least, that was the version of her I had always known.

Growing up, I NEVER saw her wear anything modern. It was always the traditional kameez shalwar. Even when the trend shifted towards modern trousers, she rigidly stuck to her classic style. She had incredibly long, thick hair that she took immense pride in, never cutting it once in her life due to some deeply ingrained cultural or religious value. Or maybe she thought she was not beautiful and this was the only thing that she can claim as a beauty by at least some standards.

Not only did she love her own hair, but she also strictly forbade me from cutting mine. Of course, my rebellious nature defied her at every single step, leading to endless arguments. I would cut them short whenever I could. Or would chop them so badly that she had to cut them really short to reverse some of the disaster. All in all, she was a textbook housewife who openly dismissed the idea of women working or being independent. She didn't even have her own bank account. Everything about her screamed conventionality and submission.

And then, out of nowhere, her life changed.

Due to a massive shortage of applicants, she was offered a job as a principal at a very prestigious evening institute. And she accepted.

I couldn't believe it. My mother? A working woman? A principal? She has not studied further after her matriculation.

But the real shock was yet to come.

One her first day of job she dressed as someone I hardly recognised. A knee-length cardigan with a tights that showed her ankles. How did she become so slim?

I decided to secretly follow her to the school.

What I saw when I arrived the school blew my mind.

There she was, standing in the courtyard, wearing an attire that was completely unrecognizable. A super short button-down shirt paired with baggy jeans!

I stood there, trying to make sense of the woman before me. Was this really my mother? The same woman who had spent her entire life lecturing me about traditions and values?

I was a married woman now. I had always questioned her life choices. I had wondered why she never wanted to work, why she never wanted to be independent. I had even argued with her over the most trivial things, convinced that she was wasting her life by limiting herself to the four walls of her home.

And yet, when she finally stepped out of those walls, I wasn't HAPPY for her.

A pang of jealousy hit me like a bulldozer.

Why on earth would she want to work? Didn't she have a home to look after? A family whose needs she was supposed to attend to? Although most of us had left the nest. Even then... What would happen to all those little things she did for us every day?

The irony was almost laughable. The same me who had always questioned her for not wanting more from life was now questioning her for actually doing something for herself.

I had wanted her to be independent, but I had also wanted her to remain available. I had wanted her to have a life of her own, but not at the cost of the life I had grown accustomed to...

And perhaps that was the most difficult truth to swallow.

I had never really thought of my mother as a woman with dreams of her own. She was my mother. The woman who stayed home, looked after us, and made sure our needs were met. Somewhere along the way, I had forgotten that before she became our mother, she was a woman in her own right.

And now that she had found it, I didn't quite know what to do with the woman she was becoming...

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I don't know if any of you could relate to this, but I, for one, got a reality check while writing this story. Of course, it's fiction, with a few snippets of my own life woven into it. But you wouldn't believe me if I told you that some of it was inspired by a dream I had. And the jealousy? Oh, it felt so real that I just had to put it into words.

Ironic how even our dreams can sometimes hold up a mirror to parts of ourselves we'd rather not acknowledge!