Mums get a lot of attention in early May every year. This has been the pattern strongly for advertisers, marketers and now the new breed – influencers. Apparently, I am supposed to belong to the last category.

To be honest, yes, it is an overdose of mommy videos, campaigns and contests but I do believe yet we need this day to celebrate and to accept ourselves. One, it does open up a lot of conversations, emotions and attempts to recognize moms for who they are and what they do.

I am quite sure I am not the ideal mum as prescribed by the unsaid rules of society; however, I do not aspire to be one!

So here are a few rules that define me as a woman, as an individual and as a mum. With this I also feel it ends in breaking a few rules too.

1. As a mum, not being aware of everything in life – More often than not, I do admit to my child, I am not aware of the answer to the question asked by him and I do say that I will come back to him with the answer if he is really keen. As curious as the young one’s mind can get, he does come back to check for a few questions, if I have the answer and I do reply as appropriately as I can.

2. Ditching the stereotyped colours for boys and girls – I remember once in a toy store located on the third floor of a fancy mall, I was browsing through the toys and stationery and so was my kid at a little distance from me.  Soon came the time when my kid decided to have a pencil box that was arranged on the shelf along with others. It was a PINK pencil box. Before I could take it ahead and go to the counter, the sales assistant, watching carefully if the child will pick something or not, rushed to his rescue to help him make an informed choice. She told the boy, “Oh no, pink is not for boys! You can buy the yellow, blue anything else.” It seemed like my boy had made his decision and now wanted a yellow box but not the PINK one. I remember that day, we rode back home with two pencil boxes. It took a long time for my boy just to open the PINK box and find it acceptable on his desk.

3. As a mum, being not so excellent a cook – If you ask me, I am tired of advertisements which portray mums who love cooking all the time. There can be various reasons for one to dislike cooking and I, too, have my own – primarily because it takes a lot of time from me when I would rather be doing something else. I literally learnt cooking after having my child! Even now, I manage with bearable cuisines being dished out. Yet I have to admit I absolutely love it when my child says he loved the meal I cooked as only I am aware of the amount of effort I would have taken to make something tasty. It is not always in my hands, of course, for it to turn out that way. However, the learning and the acceptance has been that it is fine to have meals that are sometimes boring or bland. Kitchens at homes are not spaces to create magical menus every time or for every meal. Kudos to those who can cook very well every time, but for me as long as I am sticking to a few healthy options in the day, I can’t go further into it.

4. The ‘Dress-down’ mum – Super mums in films, on television, in glossy magazines, in Bollywood are chic, have super fit bodies and are energetic all the time. I love dressing up and sometimes it can be really weird, according to others, but after a few years into motherhood, I really don’t see why I should strive to be accepted for my dressing sense. There are days when I really take effort and days when I don’t feel like it and what’s wrong with that choice?

5. Omnipresent mum – Lastly, while I am at home, I have never taken an oath to be around at all times. Recently, I started enjoying my travels, as it was giving me the freedom of solo travelling. However, on a number of occasions, I have loved travelling with my child, too. But, when travelling is not on my itinerary, I do go for theater plays, art exhibitions and to restaurants without my spouse accompanying me or the little one tagging along. I like my space, too, and I think it is fine me not worrying what the next meal for the child should be or worry if the house is in order. As mums, we manage without our partners being around all the time, so it should be so for them as well.

Mums have the special quality of taking on a lot but one must remember, like everything else, motherhood too has changed over the years. We love the identity of being mums but it cannot be the sole identity of who we are.  This, I have learnt by finally accepting myself and through the interactions I have as the curator-content creator and founder of ‘Mums and Stories’.

Mothers are complex, volatile, apprehensive and extremely emotional beings and I’m no different. Mothers are not perfect but motherhood does come with a lot of self-imposed pressure – to be on one’s toes and know the right thing and do the right thing for the children all the time. If something doesn’t go by the ‘rules’, the ‘big’, ‘fat’, ‘ugly’ guilt sneaks in every now and then.

Tell yourself this everyday – You’re not perfect! Nobody is! And the one rule to being a great mother is that there are no rules! Every child is different and every experience is unique.

Here’s what I’ve learnt from my 3 years of motherhood. And this is not a rulebook, but just my experience of what I’ve learnt to do and not do to myself, to keep some sanity intact in my otherwise eventful life:

1. It’s OK if you don’t fall head-over-heels for your newborn: When I learnt that I’m going to become a mother, I started preparing myself mentally with all the reading up and joining of social groups of first-time-mums, to pick up from their experiences. But I didn’t know what was coming my way until I had my baby and I took a break from work for the first time in 9 years! Reality struck and I slipped into post-partum depression and it turned my world upside down. I wasn’t ready for this change. I felt angry, frustrated, extremely emotional and exhausted. I wanted to run away. I wanted to sleep for days. The change was enormous and I wasn’t ready to deal with it physically or emotionally. Moreover, (this might sound horrible), I did not feel instant love for my baby. I only felt very responsible towards him and took care of him tirelessly. Love happened a lot later and that’s OK. Today, when I look back, I cannot imagine my life without my son. There is no rule that tags you a horrible mother because you took time to come to terms with the new reality. It’s a different experience for every mother and love does happen, sooner or later.

2. It’s OK to put yourself first: Being a mother isn’t easy. Like every parent, I’ve seen my mother juggle work and home and putting me and my needs first. In that process, she completely forgot to have a life of her own. Her world revolved so much around me, that after I got married, she was deeply affected by the sudden void and her recovery was long and arduous. Now, I’m a mother of a 3-year-old boy and I am aware every single day that it is very important to connect with your inner self, give yourself ‘me time’ to feel like any other normal human being. I love my son unconditionally and I will always tend to his needs to the best of my abilities. But, putting myself first doesn’t make me a bad parent. My husband made me realise once that our son will grow up one day and go about living his life independently and that’s the way the world works. Simple.

3. Don’t quit your dreams: As a mother, you have the right to make all the choices that make you feel comfortable and at peace with yourself first. I made a choice to go back to work only after 3 months of having my son. I felt guilty every second of my life, to have left him with a nanny and resumed office-work in full swing, but I learnt to grow out of it gradually. I realised that I cannot stop working. More than financial, it was an emotional need and it helped me get out of depression. It helped me regain my confidence and purpose in life. But, even if you decide to quit your job and be a stay-at-home mother, it should be entirely your choice, without a trace of guilt.

Going back to work was the hardest thing for me but I don’t regret my decision. I continued to work for 3 years thereafter, and now I’m a work-from-home mom. It doesn’t mean that I’ve quit my dreams or am taking it easy at all. But I want to accomplish something else in life that couldn’t have happened without this pivoting. This also allows me to strike a balance between work, self-studying and my son and gives an elevating sense of self-control and freedom.

Motherhood doesn’t mean that you and your baby be joined at the hip and that you sacrifice everything that defines your existence. Do what makes you happy in your head and heart and it’ll reflect positively on your child as well. Ignore the unsolicited advice that interferes with your peace of mind and just keep it simple 🙂

One year. The one that just flew by, the one that tossed us, twirled us, threw us from a trapeze and shot arrows at us as we rode into the great, wide, open unknown.

It took a while to let go – but the space in between has been thrilling, hair-raising, nerve-wracking, sometimes (read every day) annoying, but overall – enthralling. It’s like stepping out of the matrix and breathing in the fresh air. You know you could never go back.

ON PURPOSE started as an idea – that communications can drive social change, that if we were clear about our purpose, we’d attract a certain type of people and work and that we could do what we enjoy and make a difference. It was about making choices.

One year later, with 16 clients and 8 team members, we know we’re on to something. It’s not perfect, but it’s something of value. And we’ve created it together. Every time we said ‘yes’ to something we hadn’t done before, every time we said ‘yes, we will’ rather than ‘we’ll try’ and as long as we’re clear about why we’re doing what we’re doing, we’re building shared purpose, together. Here are a few things we’ve learnt in the last year:

• Clients will pay for differentiated expertise: Today, we have five clients in renewables and have gained considerable expertise in designing campaigns for Central and State governments to drive demand and effect behavior change. We’ve no longer had to pitch for business. We’ve replaced presentations with conversations about how we can work together effectively.

• Clients will pay for research if it solves a business problem: We’ve conducted research across seven states of India across public and private sector organisations and consumers to understand barriers and motivations in purchasing behavior. It’s becoming the foundation of our strategy and campaigns for clients – local insights presented to clients in the language of the boardroom.

• Flexible work spaces encourages creativity: We started our business from a co-working space at SOCIAL and meet at a common venue when we need to brainstorm and come up with strategy or creatives. Else, we work from home or from a client’s office in Delhi and Bangalore. It’s helped us maintain positive cash flow without requiring external investment and gives our clients our creative best, without the trappings of a formal office space.

• You don’t need a formal background in PR to be successful in communications: Someone took a risk with me more than a decade before. I’d switched careers from hospitality to PR, post MBA and have never looked back. Today, 50% of our team is working in communications for the first time. We have an ex-street theatre activist, an ex-Goldman Sach’s employee and journalist, a development sector researcher and film-maker and the diversity is helping us deliver campaigns that reflect the diversity of audiences our clients need to reach.

• We can work independently, yet be part of a team: 75% of our team have more than ten years of professional experience. We bring specialist skills together to deliver integrated content-driven work for our clients. That means we don’t need to necessarily supervise each other or work in the same location to deliver different requirements for a client, brought together by a single lead.

We couldn’t finish a first year anniversary post without thanking everyone who’s taken a leap of faith with us. We’re incredibly lucky to have attracted a set of extraordinary people with raw talent, attitude and unique quirks that allows to connect with each other as people first and then as professionals. We’re also grateful to the clients and industry peers who’ve supported us so whole-heartedly. We’d need to thank hundreds of people for every email, coffee, recommendation and good word you have put in for us. We hope someday to be able to repay you, or better still, pass it on

We’ve started our second year even more committed to social media than ever. Read more about our first Open Mic session to break stereotypes in our lives, how we spent our first year anniversary in Bangalore playing games in a community library and look out for our first tweet chat of the year in a series called #CriticalMatters coming to your newsfeed soon.

If you have any thoughts or ideas of how we can make ON PURPOSE a stronger force for social change in India, we’d love to hear from you. Do drop a comment or share further if you’re so inclined. Thanks for reading this and for your consistent support. We couldn’t do this without you!

An ice basket full of bubbly was ready, the house had been cleaned within every inch of itself and since we were in CR Park, local street-food dominated the menu. We just couldn’t wait! For what you may ask? An evening of revelry with some friends of On Purpose!

We were celebrating one year of On Purpose. One year of helping brands articulate their purpose. One year of working out of unconventional places. One year of choosing to work with interesting, inspiring people. And as we reflected on the year that was, we realise that one of our favourite bits was striving to take a stand for social issues and change-making. Our campaigns, where we interacted with like-minded people to discuss social issues, were fun, which is why, our celebration became another opportunity for us to gab away with some amazing people in an open mic format!

The guest list was small yet significant. We had invited friends, ex-clients who had become friends, ex-colleagues and pretty much anyone who had words of encouragement for us during our first year! What we didn’t anticipate though was a hailstorm an hour before start time. As the strong winds blew and the city came to a halt with broken trees and crazy traffic, a few brave souls made it to CR Park. To each of you, we’d like to extend a deep thank you!

We thought we’d have to urge people to speak, but were we wrong! A room full of strong, independent women with opinions – add a question to the equation and everyone was engaged! 

Even though we tried to follow a trajectory of questions, ‘What do stereotypes mean to you?’, ‘How do you think you’ve broken a stereotype?’ etc., the evening took its own course. We relived childhood memories shaped by stereotypes – two young girls not given the correct information by the kite vendor because girls don’t fly kites (obviously!). Experiences in our education/ career paths of dealing with stereotypes (Psychology? but why?!). Advice on motherhood shrouded in stereotypes (You have a son, why do you need to adopt another child? A girl?). We tried to delve deeper into our conditioning of these stereotypes.

While the whole evening was very casual, one of our friends, Pratiksha Tewari, a child psychologist, feminist, prone to writing verses on paper napkins and willing to get paid in food, took the time out to pen down a little something for us:

Hide behind a smoke screen

Keep my name out of the papers

Be called a victim or survivor

As per your convenience

I won’t.

Drop out of school

Not play with my friends

Hear my mother being criticised

For wanting to raise me as an equal

I won’t.

Be the next name for whose justice

You go on a hunger strike

And watch you easily shun

Another me behind the camera

I won’t.

Have you take away

My pain, my humiliation, my hurt

Because I knew the person

Who stole my agency

I won’t.

Be questioned on the authenticity

Of my despair, my wounds, my cries

Because the finger points

At the respectables in my family

I won’t

Cry as I share my story

Look like I wear a shroud of shame

Letting the abuse be everything

That my life will ever be about

I won’t.

It was an amazing evening, where champagne flowed, food was delicious and laughter abundant! Thank you, everyone who made it, for making it special. And everyone who was there in spirit, cheers!

What’s the best way to spend a Sunday morning? Relaxing on the bed with a good book for company is a great idea. But, a better idea is to spend it with a group of young, enthusiastic readers at a beloved library!

———-

Buguri the community library officially came into being in January 2017 in a two-room flat located in Banashankari in Bengaluru. The day was marked by gregarious children from the nearby community and many volunteers coming together to paint the walls of the space. Together they painted images of clouds and birds, and animals, and parachutes, and a giant spinning top on the bare walls. ‘Buguri’, by the way, means ‘spinning top’ in Kannada. Today, these walls enjoy the company of hundreds of books in multiple Indian languages, all donated by readers who want the joy of reading to spread farther.

On Purpose officially came into being in April 2017. As the realisation of completing one year dawned on us, we thought that it was time to deepen and widen our commitment to social change. The past year was marked by a lot of work, a lot of travel, and lots of meetings with many, many interesting people who continue to inspire us. So, naturally, in this new year of existence, we will continue doing that and getting closer to the grassroots of change-making.

What were we doing at Buguri? Quite simply, playing! Lakshmi Karunakaran from the NGO Hasiru Dala helped us plan a fun event with the children to mark the On Purpose first birthday and armed with a big box of chocolates and juice packs, we were ready to put it into action!

The fun began with some circle games to get the children in the mood. Then, we began enacting ‘This is Our House’ by Michael Rosen. This simple but beautiful story relates the tale of a child who becomes so possessive of a small box/enclosure in a park that he dismisses the entry of any other friend by making increasingly silly excuses. But, when nature calls and he is forced to leave the box for a bit, the friends invade and refuse to let him back in! The enactment was meant to enforce the ideas of sharing and inclusivity, especially the idea that the community library is for everyone and no one should be shunned on any excuse. Needless to say, it was a riot!

We moved on to craft activity next, drawing outlines of the children’s hands on coloured paper which they then filled in with their own idea of a dream home. These cut-outs were then stuck on to a huge cut-out of a house which will be on display at the library.

It was a morning filled with laughter and a lot of paper-cutting! And, we loved it! Thank you, Kshiraja Krishnan and Sangeetha for helping us make this special!

The word ‘geri’ actually refers to the ’rounds’ farmers in Punjabi villages used to take around their fields. But in Chandigarh, the ‘Geri Route’ has been for decades become the site of cars and bikes moving in rounds, with the drivers openly harassing women who walk the path.

This ‘route’ spans roads surrounding Sector 8,9,10, and 11 of the city and goes around the area where the colleges are. When I got to know about this route and the ‘culture’ it had spawned, I was horrified. I was disturbed by how sanctioned this kind of harassment and misogyny had become in the name of ‘fun’.

After moving to the city, I participated in the ‘Bekhauf Aazaadi March’ organised in the wake of the Varnika Kundu stalking case. We had marched at night across the Geri Route to let it be known that women have the right to walk on the roads at any time. There was an outpouring of raging emotions at the event.

Following the march, I posted a request using the Google Maps review option for the renaming of the route. ‘Geri Route’ is, in fact, not the official name of the street, it is just local parlance. I also started a petition on Change.org about this request and posted about it on Facebook to add more weight to the campaign. I believe changing the language using which the route is referred to is a big deal. It is a small but significant step in stopping the legitimising of the harassment that has become common and accepted there.

A few months after the review was posted, Google Maps renamed the stretch the ‘Azaadi Route’.

“Azaadi (Freedom) Route – the route where the free spirit of Chandigarh – defined best by the women who fear none and nothing in their assertion of equality – flows. No, not the freedom to do as you please, not the freedom to violate the other or to go unchecked, but the freedom to walk without fear. Bekhauf.”

(https://www.change.org/p/google-maps-change-the-name-of-geri-route-to-azaadi-route)

Idol worship and ideal worship are somewhat analogous. Both involve an irrational desire for something that doesn’t exist and something that is a figment of imagination turned into a deep-rooted socio-cultural belief and construction.

Idol worship is still not as pernicious because it is only a metaphor, a symbol after all. But the ‘ideal’, a dangerous myth has inexorably hegemonized the human societies, creating a false consciousness of perfection, camouflaging the underlying dirt . The longing for the ideal is violent, oppressive and stifling, and in the context of gender, the imposition of idealism has created a toxic womanhood under which women grapple to meet the benchmark of excellence that is predicated upon sustaining the subservient position of the “second sex” ascribed to them.

It is indispensable to attack the idealism of the ideal, to demolish the  utopia and embrace the ‘imperfections.’ While the pan-Indian, traditional “sanskari” image of an ideal woman is visibly sexist, misogynistic and patriarchal, the modern, westernized and ‘cosmopolitan’ femininity too is not spared from the patriarchal dominance. There is a culture of shame associated with body hair and fat in the mainstream cinema and fashion industries. The stigma around the expression of sexuality and nonchalant swearing by a woman (Mallika Dua) and the levels of cyber abuse and hatred in the form of masculinism that it instigates, are indicative of the insecurities of fragile masculinity over a woman trespassing the ‘masculine’ space and shaking the gender binary.

I strongly feel that we need more people who destabilize the gender binary and norms, trouble gender and bring an anarchy to the oppressive ‘ideal’ system.

This piece is about the walls women are sometimes met with when we express anything that is unexpected or not the norm. It explores the silences that trying to communicate difficult things brings about.

I’m seventeen.

He’s twenty five.

I say let’s not.

He does it anyway.

I’m twenty three.

He’s twenty three.

I say I can’t breathe.

He continues.

I’m twenty nine.

He’s in his fifties.

I say please don’t.

He doesn’t stop.

I’m thirty.

He’s in his fifties, maybe sixties.

I say I’m just doing my job.

He doesn’t stop, either.

No means nothing.

Language is a lie.

I’m seventeen.

He’s twenty five.

I say let’s not.

He says OK.

He does it anyway.

I’m twenty three.

He’s twenty three.

I say I can’t breathe.

He says then die.

He continues.

I’m twenty nine.

He’s in his fifties.

I say please don’t.

He says I’m harmless.

He doesn’t stop.

I’m thirty.

He’s in his fifties or sixties.

I say I’m just doing my job.

He says you can tell me your problems. Alone in my room.

He doesn’t stop, either.

I guess no means nothing. All language is a lie.

A sanskari woman would never go out on dates with boys who are strangers they said. But I always did what I wanted to and never stopped because I am a ‘girl’. Given my love for meeting new people, I went out on a few Tinder dates and almost dated one of them. Because, why not! Who knew, I would find love in a hopeless place!

Also, an ‘ideal woman’ of marriage-able age is expected to be thin and feminine, but I bear no shame in being overweight, (though, I am not denying my concern of my health!) But, a guy (or his family) who rejects me because of my weight is not worth living my whole life with. Hence, I chose to be the way I am, and only try to be healthy, and not live up to the expectations of the society.

At so many points in my life, I have broken the tradition of going to temple when I have periods. I see no logic in staying away from idols and temples when I am menstruating!

From the time I understood that I am the one who will be responsible for my decisions, I started making my own choices. Starting from taking PCM (Physics, Chemistry, Maths) after the 10th grade.

In the middle of the night, sitting in the dark, I had removed the option of ‘Commerce’ (that I had tick-marked first because I had been strongly suggested by my family and asked by my father to opt for it), using a whitener and selected PCM with a thought in my mind that I don’t want to blame anyone else in the future for the choices I make today.

I decided not to go for a 9-5 regular job, choosing to continue to experiment for better learning. Then one day,  I chopped off my long curly hair to feel freer than ever! I took off to the Himalayas. I got my hair colored for the first time ever and got my first tattoo, at the same time. “Why did you do this to yourself?”, my father asked. “I wanted to get this done now, there is no point if I do it at the age of 30, when you think I have become older and wiser,” I answered. He smiled back in acceptance.

Adorning myself every year with the tattoos that I have chosen, believing in their depiction, make me not an ‘ideal woman’ at all, especially as I work with children. I also have taken a very well-thought out decision in cohesion with my husband to not have a baby. We don’t have answers if and when s/he asks us what were you doing when this world was becoming a sad place to live for us!