»Note from the editors: Feminist joy is an editorial column in which we celebrate our big or small joys and love files for ourselves and as a collective resistance. You can send your entries by e -mail shahinda@feminisminindia.com
Every time I put out a spoiled curry or a rotting vegetables from the frustrating old fridge, trouble changes through me, whose irregular cooling turns the waste of food into a normal sight like the ubiquitous puddles of leaks and random frost stains.
I then follow my mother for hours, try to convince her to buy a new fridge – to argue with her and to tell her how much less time it takes to complain about the taste of food and even get into a sermon on food waste and sustainable life. This is usually the point at which I was thrown away.
She never really tells me why she doesn’t want to buy a new fridge. When I try to understand it, I am back on the day on which it arrived.
Source: Canva
I remember one day – eight years ago – came home from school and sitting there. I asked her excitedly about the sight of a new device: “When did Papa bought it?”
Mama replied: “Your father doesn’t know about it.”
I was shocked. Mom doesn’t buy so big things – that was the first thought that ran through my head.
Only dad had “big money” for refrigerators.
My mother woman mother from my mother, which was transformed according to the graduate (rather forced), hardly had to have an agency, even to make her immediate surroundings in a deeply patriarchal household anchored in sexist norms.
In the twelve years of my existence, all important financial decisions in the household were made by my father: cars, devices, furniture – even kitchen utensils.
My mother received a allowance for tiny things – food, booklet and clothing – the things that are necessary to keep the house going, not the things that are necessary to form it. My mother woman mother from my mother, which was transformed according to the graduate (rather forced), hardly had to have an agency, even to make her immediate surroundings in a deeply patriarchal household anchored in sexist norms.
To mention unnecessarily that such a dark situation has created a frustration that was brought to a boil. This turning point came when the last leg of the patriarchal horse was finally broken and my mother had to endure home abuse in front of my eyes.
Then she decided to accept a job. A little job as an assistant in the HR department with a lean salary in a company that allowed work from home – because it was not allowed to assume at the expense of her budget tasks. No matter that she didn’t know anything about HR. It doesn’t matter that your household work was not even reduced when she started working. She still managed to grow through the ranks within five years and steadily increased her income.
She didn’t do it alone. She learned to seek support from others – from other women. She confronted resistance. The fights in our house were common and more explosive. But she insisted – and relied on women who, like them, came from similarly patriarchal environments.
And through one of them – whose husband headed an electronics store – she started buying a refrigerator. Not for the household. For themselves.
Source: Canva
And that was the story of my mother’s story financial authorization – How could she buy a refrigerator for the first time. Without asking someone. Without informing someone. With your own money.
Maybe that’s why she refuses to separate from it. It stands for her long struggle to free yourself from patriarchal bonds and to regain your voice and self -worth. And maybe it also stands for my feminist joy.
Your resistance gave me my own strength. Because of their unshakable resistance, I found the courage to dream the space for dreaming and the will to pursue my ambitions – even if it meant flying through the country. She taught me that there was a pleasure to create space for herself – when speaking, the selection and when passing with agency.
On this day, maybe for the first time, I realized that women in our household also speak, deal, buy, buy and create for themselves.
I currently hear a rumbling and dilapidated compressor of the refrigerator. Maybe I’ll tolerate it a little longer, I think.
Sohalika Shrivastava is a student in the 3rd year at Iit Madras Out and shortly before it is to carve a niche. In her free time she likes to read about animal facts and likes to learn
