Resting

There are many resources and people who remind me and many to rest these days. This space was and is not always available to all. Even now, it is not available equally.

Being able to rest is a product of many factors such as material means, time, a support network, geography, world events, life events, individual situations.

I am therefore looking back this week with the privilege of time, love and care around me. I have time to think and read and write.

Since many years, I have been free of patriarchal constraints and the intergenerational internalized misogyny of people who didn’t appreciate my roshni.

A woman who loved to read asking me “why do you think you can sit and read right now when there’s so much to do?” was to me a big betrayal as well as the beginning of a realization that women who weren’t allowed to rest by systems and structures that use and misuse unpaid labour in homes and society become oppressive operatives of that very system and perpetuate the very practices they suffered and they don’t realize it.

So this week, I rest because I can and I choose to.

I rest on behalf of Devi and Amba, Radha, Kamala and Veena.

My rest has been paid for by my foremothers and is being supported by my children.

My heart is strong, in many ways.

I am very grateful.