Me First Or Baby First?

Motherhood and womanhood are roles that are extremely demanding, but not to be pitted against each other. We bring to you three powerful women who have struck the right balance by refusing to let one identity interfere with another.

- Garima Syal

ON A DULL Sunday afternoon, I’m doing what most introverts can be found doing—cuddling in the warmth of my home, unwilling to drag my lazy self out of bed and flipping through channels on my television screen. That’s when I stumble upon a commercial that left me smiling and thinking! It was the advertisement of a premium wrist watch brand where a mom-to-be shared her concerns about what kind of a mother she would be— probably someone who wouldn’t make ‘gol chapatis’. That’s the part which made me smile. But what set me thinking was what followed—her description of her own mother, a ‘ghumakkad maa’ (read wanderer-cum-explorer mother). The protagonist admitted that her mother’s ‘travel stories were her fairy tales’. To my mind, the woman brought home a pertinent point in her closing words, “Thank you for loving your life as much as you love me, because motherhood isn’t a sacrifice; it is after all a choice!”