Wife. Small word, big meaning. One syllable. Seems so much longer, heavier, deeper.
Am new to this world. Of wives I mean. And am just being slowly led in. Does a husband's world seem as daunting? Wives as mothers, daughters, daughter-in-laws, wives and friends. Wife as a chef, housekeeper, manager, teacher, lover, counselor and laundromat. Working wives as employees and bosses, leaders and followers, the doers and the ones getting it done.
Wives living up to expectations - familial, social, personal.
And amongst all this, the recurring question - who am I?
Does taking on this new identity make me lose mine so far? Or does it just alter it slightly? Does it add a texture or a nuance? Or does it take over my life?
The seemingly small change of a name, don't in-laws get how it takes away all that is mine and fills the hole with all that am supposed to be? A sort of a blueprint for a house no one asked me if I wanted to build.
Wives move homes, change cities, wake up in a strange new bed with a strange new way of welcoming the day. They give up living with people they have loved all their lives and embrace new ones. New ones who claim they're parents and we're daughters, but when push comes to shove, how come the husbands don't get asked the same questions? How come their words carry more weight than ours? How come everything else being equal, they still get the bigger piece of the pie? You know what I mean.
And it's all supposed to be what we are supposed to expect. If my new parents treat me better than an average Indian girl's am supposed to be grateful for that. Thanking the Gods for giving me better than the rest. But really, why can't it be the norm?
Why do mums of boys still ask us if we can cook? Why do we have to recognise their underwear on a stand? Why do we have to keep track of how many rotis they prefer? And why do we have to toe the line?
Is that why after years of living together, families split up? Is that why women lose their sense of what's reasonable and what's absurd? Is that why I keep striving to remind myself, of me?
