The Guilt Hormone : An appeal to women to stop revelling in guilt!

(Published in The Statesman, 6 February 2006. Copyright Gowri Mohanakrishnan)

Why do we women feel guilty about so many things? We almost seem to enjoy taking the blame for anything that goes wrong, and we constantly try to appease those whom we imagine we have wronged. Invariably, these feelings arise in connection with our husbands and our families!

I just spoke to a fifty something grandmother who is an amazing woman, mother and sister -- my sister, in fact. She is brilliant at her work and at home, and she makes new friends every day--and keeps them. She built her career from scratch, starting to work full time for the first time at the age of thirty-six. She is now an expert in her field and works six days a week when she's not working seven, for about ten to fourteen hours a day. She travels extensively, inside the country and out, and sometimes does four trips a week if the need arises. Her work centres around cancer patients, and she brings hope, happiness and very often a chance of life to thousands of people. She was feeling guilty that she doesn’t spend enough time at home!
As someone who hasn’t worked full time in the last twenty years, I've always admired her drive, her energy, her discipline and her sense of commitment. Also her confidence and her complete lack of vanity. She can do with three hours of sleep in a night if someone--friends, family or anyone connected with work--needs her. She keeps in touch with patients over the phone and answers every call with a smile in her voice, no matter what time of the day or night the call comes in. And there are scores of calls in a day.

I'm amazed at the complete absence of the self congratulatory in her character, but I am stunned at the way she pulls herself up when she feels she has hasn’t done enough. I sometimes think that if she'd been a man, she'd have come home grouchy, stomping and yelling at everyone to keep quiet, switch off the TV and answer the damn phone for a change! I can’t understand why she feels guilty about anything. Once, she told me she felt bad that she didn’t make all her Diwali sweets at home as she used to before she started working. I asked her how many women she knew who made their Diwali sweets at home had done even a fraction of the things she did, and how many women made Diwali sweets at all when you could go out and buy them. And were Diwali sweets that important anyway?

It isn’t silly or funny that cooking-- or not cooking--is one of our greatest guilt trips.
I have apologised to one or the other of my children at the end of a meal which didn’t really taste just like mother (and gosh, in some cases my mother, not theirs) usually makes and I have actually promised to make it up to them! Now the important thing here is that the guilt doesn’t arise out of an accusation, it comes from within. What gives birth to it? Generations of voices in our blood, telling us we have to be good, we have to take care of home, husband and children, and put ourselves last? Possibly. The woman I'm talking about is loving, caring and competent and doesn’t have anything to reproach herself with. But the guilt has woven itself into our characters and really, life seems to lose something without it!

Guilt alone is pardonable (Oh great, now we have to feel guilty about feeling guilty!) If we feel a twinge of it, we can pull ourselves up and tell ourselves to snap out of it and quick. It's appeasement we've got to watch out for. Sometimes you slave and kill yourself over something that nobody really wanted or expected. And you end up feeling that no one appreciates what you do. That leads to a whole new set of complications.

Some solutions:
Tell yourself -- and others, when required -- that you are a person, not a service.
Remind yourself that no one is paying for the service, it is all about caring and sharing in a family.
If it must be called a service, well, then somedays service can and will be lousy; it tends to be in so many places. Everyone is entitled to make mistakes.
If some people are impossible to please, stop trying to please them.

And last, put your feet up once in a while and reflect.

Tee Time Tale

(Published in The Statesman, December 26, 2005. Copyright Gowri Mohanakrishnan)

In all my forty three years, I've never won a prize at games. And today, a beautiful November Sunday, I won at golf (category: Novices and Beginners). It amazed me and it has stunned my family into a respectful silence.

I spent my entire school life trying to get out of the way of basketballs, soft balls and cricket balls that classmates aimed at me. With one hand holding my spectacles in place, I would run to a corner of the field and look out anxiously for missiles. There was a reason why I didnt get into trouble with the PT and games teachers. One rainy July morning when we were in Class V, PT had to be taken indoors in a classroom. The teacher gave us a dictation test of sports related words. I was the only girl who could spell 'Calisthenics' and 'Eurythmics' in a class of forty. That didn’t actually win me exemption from the dreaded ball games, but the teachers tolerated me and ignored me until I passed out from school. It was a great relief to me.
I'm no sportsperson, and I'm a terrible traveller as well, which is why it is hard to believe that the prize that was awarded to me was for the best Long Drive.

I didnt play the match. Those who did played 36 holes over two days. I only entered for the long drive, pitch and putt competitions at the insistence of friends who wanted me to do it for a lark. I wasn't so sure. Go and make a fool of myself on the golf course in front of all those people? I said yes, anyway, getting carried away by all the high spirits and good natured fooling that always goes on at Ladies’ Meets. My old friend Lizzy has a kind heart and she knew I was really feeling terrified deep down inside. She took me aside, pressed a club into my hands and spoke to me calmly and patiently before sending me out into the field. Her words played over and over in my head. 'Eye on the ball. Forget everything else. Just keep your eye on the ball.' My guru's advice paid off.

It was Wodehouse's stories that first attracted me to golf. His golfing stories capture all the beauty of the links: the expanse, the sense of leisure and the silences. The golf courses in the Dooars, where I live, are all located below the foothills of the Himalayas, and two or three of them lie along riverbeds. There is a sense of nature in repose on these courses and I have enjoyed many walks on them. Needless to add, when there were no golfers sending balls whizzing around me.

There is a woman in a Wodehouse golf story who is a tennis player. The hero, a strong, silent four handicapper worships her, but vows to make her a golfer before he weds her. On her first session on the course, she tees off without a care. To her amazement, her ball sails away for yards and yards. She is hooked to the game for life.

I too hit the first ball without a care. After all, I had nothing to lose. Everyone knows I'm no golfer. I saw it sail away into the distance in a perfect arc as if it had a life of its own. Disbelieving and filled with wonder, I attempted the next shot. And went to pieces, trying to live up to my own performance.

Shot number 2 was disqualified. At number 3 I pulled myself up a bit -- with friends yelling encouragement -- and managed to achieve contact; a feat in itself, and distance, if not direction.Direction -- yes, I have a sense of one as of today. I have an answer to that question that all unemployed people dread, 'What do you do ?' I shall say, 'I play golf'.