Inky Pinky Ponky

At 25 most people stop having troublesome, dramatic lives. Most people have the job they want and are either in love with someone or engaged to someone whom they will eventually learn to love. If not this, they are either getting married or having kids. At least that’s what seems to be the situation around me.

Me, not I sire, I have found that being ever so indecisive and wanting to do several things at once and nothing at all the next minute makes me a very obvious customer to restlessness. But to be true to myself, all this restlessness has really helped shape who I am. Learning new things, badgering people to know more seems to be a positive push most times in my profession.

But then again, i have never been lazy about my aspirations. I have always known what i want and what i must do to get it. I think this is why my decisions have never been dramatic. Not once have I regretted or worried and pondered upon the choices I've made. As far as i can remember, once i knew what it is that i wanted to do, i have in a single – minded way striven to get it. If there have been external factors that haven’t been in my control that changed my path, i have also been flexible enough to go with it, as far as i was moving in the direction that i was actually wanting to get to.

Before I turned 25, my career and studies kept taking the priority seats in the theatre of my life and I was happy with that. Since I have only seen working women in the house I have always accepted that to be the norm and never questioned my priorities. But now I wonder if I should’ve stopped and looked for a different audience. Or now, if there is a different audience, should my priorities, only but naturally, change?

I'm not sure if it is, but it seems to me that just about every woman, at some point in her life goes through a career vs. family conundrum. She will beat herself up and ask herself a million times if she is in fact right in putting her ambitions ahead of her family and if eventually that is exactly what she wants. As luck would have it, no matter how much you like your job or do it well, if you aren’t growing a part of you is looking to do better, do more. Pushed by a general sense of restlessness I've been seeking answers to the all important “what next” in my life and as any 25 year old Indian girl will tell you, the choices are fast narrowing to shaadi profiles or admission letters. After months of looking at my choices and examining my current situation (life, in general and job, specifically), I've realised I'm guilty. I'm guilty of wanting more out of my career than my family life. Problem is I don't feel guilty. Has the society attuned us so that we've forever accepted that a woman's life must slowly but surely give way to a “family first” life, that the man is the bread winner and woman the "home minister", that if a woman wants not to have to give up her dreams and ambitions for her boyfriend/ fiancé/ husband then she is infact not “shaadi material” and that for a woman to be ambitious is to be in some inherent way, "wrong".

In a time like today when women like Chandha Kochhar, Zia Mody and Indra Nooyi are breaking the glass ceiling and proving their excellence, then why in my small world should I not dream and strive to be where they are? Don’t I, as a 25 year old educated girl of today, owe it to myself and my parents, to succeed and be true to who I want to be? Is it in some way a repayment of my parents’ efforts and sacrifice and an answer to the dreams they’ve seen for me? What if making gol rotis and fulfilling social requirements isn’t what I want to do. What if I no more want to let my relationships define me? Is there ever winning when you’re bound down by who you want to be and how the society thinks you should be?