Torn into two..

I remember hearing older women saying that they could not go anywhere alone because their husband are helpless without them. I remember hearing this and being annoyed with them for putting themselves in a situation where the man of the house wont be able to find his toothbrush without the woman putting the paste on it for him and handing it over to him. For having to starve if she is gone, going out in crushed, dirty clothes coz he knows not how to wash and iron. Gender based roles being played at their extreme. I hated it.

I also remember hoping that marriage would not change anything much. But then I would see my aunts coming to meet us without the husbands and then letting their hair down with their mother. I also remember cousins not being able to come and spend the night chatting as the husbands would take them away after dinner, not being able to talk on the phone for long etc. I used to wonder why, and get annoyed that the woman needed to be taken away, back to her married home, by what seemed like force. Against her internal will and wishes. She went quietly..and I thought..that wont happen to me. I shall go and come as I please and nothing will change.

Well, realization has struck. I would love to go and stay with my mother for a few weeks, knowing that the husband shall survive without me. He is capable of making Dum Aloos and Palak Paneer, so the kitchen is safe, he is sort of capable of finding his own things, even in a mess of his creation, he kind of knows where his things are unless I have moved them. He is ok with a fast internet connection and a Nikon within arms reach. I am sure he shall miss me etc etc..but he is an independent person.

However I am in torn into two. The need to go home, get to India, and the need to stay back and be with him. My love for my mother and family, it seems, occupies a different sector of my heart and is there permanently and does not overlap of overshadow the sector of my heart that loves the husband. Its weird, wanting to go, but not really, wanting to stay, but not really. And I know what is going to happen..the usual..when I am here I want to be there with mum, when I am with mum I want to be here with him. The solution perhaps lies in living in a house that contains both these people! But that is not always possible.

Thus the realization has struck that perhaps some of these aforementioned women went home because they HAD to, while the others seemed to make noises about not wanting to go, but doing so happily, as they missed their spouse. Perhaps they were, like me, torn into two.

Possible?....