A letter to my son..

Dear monu,

I am writing this letter to tell you about the mistakes of my life so that you can learn something from them and stay away from them..

A lot of people ask me what you want my son to become when he grows up? Most people expect you to be an engineer like your parents or a doctor or a scientist or something equally prestigious. 

But as the woman who gave birth to you, i am telling you i have no expectations of the sort from you. Please do not live to satisfy the society or the people around you because the only heart that you have to overwhelm is your own. Follow your heart and your passion. Earn a living but do not live to earn. You will find people in every turn trying to put you in the "perfect" format of the society. But remember, you are different and you are special and only you knows what will make you happy. 

But yes I will always have one expectation from you, I want you to be a good human being. Every time you raise your hand to help a fellow being, i will feel proud about you. And every instant a woman says he is a gentleman, I will believe that i have done something right in your upbringing. 

I can never promise you the best of everything money can buy, but i promise to teach you the importance of what money can't buy. I promise to give you a happy home and a laughing child hood. 

And last but not the least.. a word about religion.. You will grow up seeing me and your father lighting lamps and praying and might visit to temples with us. But remember religion is a belief and not a way of living. You can choose to believe in any god as long as you know that every living being is an extension of the same god. It took me a lot of years of thinking and reading innumerable books on different religions to learn this. But i hope i can teach this to you in the beginning itself so that you will know that a ten rupee note will be more valuable to a hungry human than to a rich god. 

I hope sincerely that i will be able to do an ok job in bringing you up and even if i mess up, please remember these things...

Love

Amma.

Working women and male chauvinists...

Finally after so much thinking, discussing, taking opinions and much more, i have started to work again leaving my baby in day care.  I will tell you this was not an easy decision, but I believe i am right or rather this is the choice i take for my life. I need not explain my decisions to anybody but since there are so many who would like to offer their opinions for free, i would like to write a few words on the topic.

Like i once put the status, it is never easy for a mom to leave her kid with someone else and stay away from him/her the whole day. Initially i cried through the day and i could not understand what is happening. Given the fact that i am not an emotional person, this was much more than i could handle. And then i realised, I am a MOTHER. And that little human whom i left in day care is an extension of myself. Which made me realise this is the first of many tears i have to flow for him. This will follow with his many heartbreaks small and big, when he finds those special friends who will replace me as his confidante, when he leaves for hostel, when he grows up so much that he can no more be contained in my arms. When every one of these and many more other things happen, i will cry silently knowing this is for the best. And today also i know this is for his best. What motivation will i give my children if i fail to have a career inspite of studying so much, With what face will i tell him study hard you have to find a job and earn your bread if i do not do that? 

These are just my ideas of motherhood. I have nothing against stay at home moms. These decisions are highly influenced by your upbringing and your surroundings . Moreover these are the decisions only a couple can make for themselves.

Now a note to all those of my colleagues who cannot tolerate or accept a woman working with them with the same eyes as a guy, When you tell me and so many others like me, "your baby is so small to be left in day care", I keep quiet not because i respect you. No i have no respect for a man who cannot respect the choices a woman makes for herself. I keep quiet because it think about the woman who is destined to live with you and i feel sorry for her. 

The next category of comments are if you really have to work, why did you even give birth? Dear guys, you have no right whatsoever to question any womans decision to have a baby or not which includes your wife. Because the physical and emotional pain a woman has to undergo to carry a aby for 9 months in her tummy and give birth to it cannot be described by words. And since god has not given you a chance to experience it, kindly keep quiet and respect a woman for that.

Last but not the least of the category of male chauvinists i would like to present here are the ones who actually think woman have some sort of advantage over men in any post this includes comments like " If i were a woman i would have got it for free". Dear sir, I would like to bring in to your kind notice that no university gives any woman an extra mark or sets an easy question paper especially for woman, also flirting or geting advantage is not something you cn associate with any woman. Next time you look at your  (very unfortunate) daughter, please think about her flirting to get an advantage in office. You will understand how we feel when you pass such comments. 

I am not writing this for myself, this is for all those moms who have daughters and actually feels, i should not educate her much because she will also have to endure all these hardships. Dear all, these chauvinists are just jealous pricks. Please don't let thse men dictate your view of what world or men are. Just think about those wonderfull partners who support you and help you with literally everything and understand that you are s busy as they are. Those are the real men and please tell your daughters to set their bars high. Aim for the stars ladies, there is nothing you cannot achieve if you ever want to