A Room Ay One’s Own

Today is A Room of One’s Own Day it was quite ridiculous I thought if we are talking about non-communication, sectarian and this is making it worse.

But somewhere at the back of my mind a whisper emerged, remember Virginia Wolfe, and a Room of one’s own?

“my marriage is bad, I need a place where I can walk in, without questions being asked.”

“I love kids but I do not want to have kids, the pressure from my parents, and in-laws is killing me,”

‘i don’t like to cook’

“I don’t like housekeeping”

Each time these whispers gathered strength other voices drowned them with “So, Sania when do plan to settle down?”

“Indira, I don’t care if you head pepsico , we need milk in the house, and I can’t ask my son-in-law to get milk.”

“Your daughter should learn how to cook, else her husband will have trouble.”

“oh! Meena can focus on her career she has two maids at her beck and call”

Voices were many, shutting the door seemed a great way to keep the din, out, but what does one with suffocation of a stifled voice, one needs a room of one’s own to voice it. Virginia wolfe says any woman who wants to be a fiction writer should have a room one’s own and money, I think it goes for any woman.

No I am not being a feminist her, in the room of my own, labels are not allowed the voices you hear are voices of human beings who happen to biologically female.

Do you see this beautiful piece of decor in the other’s room, yes, the one that does the laundry, cooks, picks and drops the kids to school, and goes to work every morning at nine? Well in a Room of one’s own she morph’s she comes to her own. She is at the ledge knowing that the wings are just emerging and she is at the moment a fledging, she is poised to fly.

A Room of one’s own is where so many women have lived after they died and were burnt at the Ghats of Varanasi, the words that went unheard during their life time sometimes being heard like that whisper.

Some women do manage a room of one’s own where they share their narratives, with other women their daughters and their sons, the sons then take this narrative into a Room where the narrative now becomes the narrative of the son’s mother, or the man’s wife,  the woman’s joy, and sorrow her triumph or failure narrated only through the narrative of the accepted.

Her truth gets washed away with laundry she does, or trapped in the  dust trapped corners of the house, maybe even burns as fuel in the food she cooks.

A Room of one’s own…. I am still looking for it.