I conformed and I am guilty.

I am so damn a conformist that I want to kick myself for this once again. Being a conformist , seeking approvals , pleasing people has been characteristically me  but damn it ! I am not bringing an iota of change around me.
This Diwali was a very cozy affair for us. No invitations given , none accepted (in fact none received) being in a  new city and my poor inclination for socialising .The only three people who visited me were my bhabhi's mom  and  sister and the sister's co-sister. The co sister lost her husband a few months back so they very thoughtfully brought her along so that she gets some change from her otherwise subdued mood. Everything  went on well . we chatted , we laughed , we discussed kids , heard of old times when bhabhi's mom was a young bride .It was an all-women party .  My GMIL( age 100 years and is hard of hearing ) , I and those three had a good time together. We were women from three different generations and were  talking about the changes that have come in last century in a woman's life and her expectations from her family and expectations  from  her by her family . We all  by and large  agreed that things have changed for better.
     It was time to say bye and  just then GMIL suggested to give them haldi kumkum ( as is customary in traditional way). I  don't offer haldi kumkum to anyone but mostly around festival times and when GMIL is around she insists on offering it to married women . Me being stupid me , cannot ignore what elderly people in the family suggest ( Mostly some innocuous though mostly illogical requests are made which I try to follow  as my conflict avoiding  mechanism like  offer blouse piece to ladies visiting (matching be damned) bring red roses for God ,bring beetle nut , paan and some useless stuff to be given to ladies which I am sure  would be lying in their fridge  for days on) . I don't do it if not reminded but I invariably do it when  old people insist upon, but for once I should have given her suggestion a neglect . Asa GMILmade suggestion the cosister immediately left and started wearing her sandles and lingered outside in Verandah , bhabhi's sister  ofcourse was ill at ease like me  while her mom and aji(GMIL) were looking at me with expectation that I would go in  and bring haldi kumkum box .I felt the pressure and did not want to make it very obvious that  I  was avoiding it as bhabhi’s mom (who was a young widow herself) waited . Finally I gave haldi kumkum to the only   Suvasini(whose husband is alive) among the  three  hastily .
The granny has been staying with us for more than 15 years now and is almost 100 years old , I do not expect her to make a change in her thinking  and on top of it she is stone deaf and we have to engage in a lot of dumb charades in order to communicate with her . Bhabhi’s mom is from previous generation  and comes from a very traditional background so she must have resigned to her fate and still attaches importance to haldi kumkum and stuff ( I remember last time when I visited her for brief time , I despite being in a great hurry , she took me to her DEV GHAR ( god’s room) and asked me to put haldi kumkum for myself(she is not entitled to put it on my forehead herself  because she has lost her husband) .
This lady(C-S) who is still grieving her husband’s death , already learnt the dirty rules by which traditions go. She is  intelligent enough to know that haldi kumkum offered or not is not a big deal  but discrimination she will have to deal with is a reality and I feel she experienced it pretty early and may be in a  bitter way.
And you know what  I feel?I feel  such TRADITIONS BE DAMNED and PEOPLE CONFORMING (be it wily nily)to such traditions be damned .
Guys! I plead guilty.

Motherhood Thy Name Is Guilt

I vivdly remember ,that I was just out of labour room when my Mom showed me  the freshest baby I had ever seen (I mean newest arrival in  the world) and I felt no bond towards the baby and lo!!!there was this   onrush of guilt which since then I have felt umpteen times.How could I not feel the affection (mamta -to be more apt), Iam not being a good mother *guilt guilt guilt*.
The baby looked red,  his skin flaky , head elliptical   and again  the familiar feeling *guilt guilt guilt* , for  he does not look as cute as a  Johnson and Johnson baby they show in advertisement ,  I should not have refused to eat custard apple seeds powder with honey which my Mom had insisted upon and claimed that it would be good for his skin and hair .*guilt guilt guilt*.
Whenever he had a colick pain and he cried hard , I was pleading guilty to myself .Either I ate something wrong or the  baby was hungry and I did not know  or I had overfed him . Again *guilt guilt guilt*
Since then I am actually riding on a guilt trip.Now I am a mother of two so naturally guilt has doubled in its magnitude.
I feel guilty when I am taking care of younger one's needs because I am neglecting the elder one ,
similarly when I help the elder one with his HW automatically I am neglecting the younger one .
 when Kids ask  for maggi and I refuse them and give them  greens instead , I feel guilty , but when I am busy and have no time to cook and I give them maggi , its the same feeling *---*.
 Sometimes I pressurise them to study  hard and I feel guilty being pushy and sometimes I just let it go and I feel  more guilty being careless.
I have taken guilt to a level of fine art . When I was  a working  mom , I felt immensely guilty for not giving kids enough time , I always thought Quality time came from Quantity time so *---* . then I left my job and I still felt guilty , may be guiltier if possible, because now I had so much of time at hand that I gave a damn about the quality time.
I asked my mother , if she ever felt the same way  and her reply was a revealetion to me . She said "Now that you ask me about the guilt ,I feel terribly guilty that you have inherited this guilt gene from me ".
I wanted to ask my mother in law too but could not muster the courage because Iam afraid she would be feeling guilty of atleast  one thing  i. e. to allow her son to marry me.