Day of women

It was in very early 70s, may be 1970 itself, when my father took me to his office as my mother had taken my elder brother to her mother’s home for something very urgent and I couldn’t be left alone at home. It was a day well spent, being cuddled and adored by my father’s colleagues and friends. However, what I remember very clearly is a visit to an imposing chamber of a senior lady official, who gifted me a box of toffees. While India had a history of very strong willed ladies and one of the most strong willed and charming lady, Indira Gandhi was ruling the country, seeing a lady official, sitting in a big well furnished chamber lording over a horde of males was something rare in those days.

Speaking of strong willed women, notwithstanding the historical perspective, I am quite used to seeing such women around me. My mother’s mother, a diminutive, fragile and very slim woman, managed a large brood consisting of sons, daughters their spouses, grandchildren as also extended family members with much efficiency and aplomb. My mother herself was a bit of a rebel having taken to professional singing much against her family’s wishes and eventually becoming an artist of some renown and prominence. My wife laid down her own rules of living the life her way, long before women’s lib became a fashionable word. My daughter is very head strong having chosen her own path to her life’s journey. And this analogy of my immediate family can be extended to my female friends, colleagues, team members, bosses based on the impression that I got by dealing with several of them.

Therefore, for someone like me, Women’s Day is not an annual event, but a way of life on day to day basis. I will not use any eulogy for them as that will be a discrimination, even if in a positive or superiority sense! 

I will just wish each one of my acquaintances, including the men, a happy women’s day, for celebration requires no real reason but just an occasion.

And this post will be incomplete without wishing Happy Mahashivratri to all my readers.