Recently, I went to an exhibition where I saw a painting showing four women, captioned “Four Generations” and the floodgates of thoughts opened in my mind about what the world of women is made of. This painting had a pretty woman in her twenties, a prettier girl of about five to six years and two of the prettiest old women in their early sixties. What attracted me the most was these sexagenarians who had an aura about them and were depicting something like been there and done that. Thanks to them they reminded me of my mother, sister, aunts and a whole lot of females who keep alive and continue the chain of the human species.
My dad’s job was just to put an X or Y chromosome in the womb of my mother and then vanish from the scene. She had to nurture that seed there, take care, no bending, no running, no dancing, no twisting, no turning and no foolhardy business lest she could abort me. Eat proteins and healthy food not because she liked it but for me to be born healthy and with all the limbs and organs intact and working. She was past prime of her youth when she conceived me and had a risk of an unhealthy fetus.
I was sucking her bloodstream for all the food, oxygen and water, and in return I was giving her all the waste back. I was growing like a monster day by day by being gluttonous like a maggot and was kicking her and punching her from inside, at my will, and making her puke, cramp, nauseate, but still she was an epitome of love. When I felt enough of that dark room and wanted to come out I literally tore her apart putting her in excruciating pain, torment and agony of the labor. Crushing her stomach, giving her back pain and knocking the wind out of her. She was bent upon birthing me naturally and did not want to cut herself open to ease the pain. With no painkillers at her disposal she showed me the light of the day, and I? Stupid as I was, I sucked at her breasts like I never had food in my short span of nine months.
In spite of my ingratitude, she hugged me, smothered me with kisses as though I was her prized possession. And she took care of me from all the angles till I was old enough to clean my own bum. She used to call me “mera pyara beta” (my sweet child). Did I deserve it? When later in life I realized what women went through, I started calling her “ your majesty “ a maxim I use for respect and love for women. She was majestic.
I don’t know who said “Frailty, thy name is woman” but I sure know he did not know how challenging it is to be a woman. Have you ever heard of something called Mother Nature? Oh yeah, she blesses a woman with the arrival, every month. This friend of her hits her and she yells. If you see her sleeping, crying, consuming sweet balls, you should know, it’s her arrival. She is suffering from mood swings. One moment, she wants to laugh but the very next moment, she wants to curl up into a ball and weep. She is an unwanted guest. She also appears at the most unexpected times like an exam, trip, airport, station, office and practically anywhere.
And you know what? It was a taboo to discuss them in a puritanical society of which my mother belonged. It was just not permitted by the society to acknowledge its existence. She was considered impure, possessed, polluted and filthy and was outcast for four-five days. If she wanted me at her side, I had to do full monty and only then I could touch her.
From about the age of ten or eleven, when menstruation starts, a girl’s life is profoundly affected by the activities of the ovaries. Menstrual cramps, breast tenderness, irritability, migraines and the worst thing of all… bleeding, that lasts 5 to 6 days out of 30 days. But wait, there’s more…. Let’s add in PMS that starts a week before and the postmenstrual fatigue that comes after and see how many days of the month a girl feels “good”. And the worries the mother will go through of this tender girl… God bless her.
Add ovulation to the fray… shooting pain for 1-3 days when the ovulation actually occurs as well as the message to the vaginal mucosa to make a lot of sticky and gooey mucus. And add the worries about pregnancy to her stress level. Oh and those pesky ovarian cysts randomly causing stabbing pain that comes and goes without any warning and sometimes making her have a surgery to get relief.
Do you think it has an end? Oh yes. It has. Blissfully it will pause, calling itself menopause. Almost done with the horrors of menstruation, welcome menopause. Welcome, signs? No… it comes with its own baggage. Hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness and again with the irritability. Now, she gets to notice hair growing on the upper lip, where it shouldn’t. The bones are cracking from the lack of estrogen and she lives in the fear of getting osteoporosis, hip fractures and some have the horrible hunch back.
95% of men do not understand the pain a woman goes through her life. In spite of these emotional breakers, she keeps you happy, takes care of the home and makes a life of a man blissful and ecstatic. Isn’t she a fantastic gift from God to us?
Let us start respecting women for all that she is.
Welcome Dr. Satish Bendigiri adultsmart expert! With a rich academic and corporate background, he passionately explores love, marriage, and growth in his articles.
Leave a Reply