During my monthly visit (a necessity at this age not a luxury believe me) to the Beauty parlour, or salon as they are called nowadays, I came across a young girl with impossibly beautiful long hair who was sitting in the waiting area with an infant and a young boy of 3-4 years.
Now, I love small children when they belong to somebody else but am scared of young boys, they are a typical breed full of pent up energy.
Anyway, I sat next to her and tried to peek into the multiple fold to see the ‘baby’, the young lady obliged and I gazed upon a cute pink face scrunched up in sleepy concentration. After the usual conversation I gleaned that she was the young aunt and these kids belonged to her elder sister. The baby was just 3 weeks old, but her sister had to visit the parlour so here we are. Between all this conversation the boy tried to rescue a goldfish from drowning in the decorative aquarium of the salon.
A woman standing at the counter turned and came to us and informed that ‘it’ will take three hours. She was undoubtedly the mother of this duo, the sister told her to go ahead and after setting up a ‘feeding time for the baby’ the young beautiful mother went inside. I was intrigued and as I still had a few minutes before my appointment I decided to vent my curiosity.
“Your sister is in the media industry, TV or something?”
“No, Didi was a teacher but she has resigned. She is very beautiful, everybody asks this question,” the young girl replied.
My query though was based on the need to come to the parlour to ‘become beautiful’ after barely a month of delivery. It turned out that it had been hinted broadly by the father of these two beautiful children that wasn’t it high time she did herself up, after all how many days was needed to go around with oily sticky hair etc.
With modern medicine the old ‘40 day’ rest period for young mothers is out. After all women go back to work after a week of delivery now. But my point is that it should be they who should want to. If the young mother just wants to be a mother for a month, why can’t she be? Why does she have to always be the beautiful wife?
Women juggle so many roles in a lifetime, daughter, wife, daughter-in-law, mother etc. The men do too definitely but the role of a mother is unique. Without getting mushy about it, let us at least give respect to her and time.
Please, can I just be a mother for a few days?
JUSTICE FOR WOMEN 