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In our family, my father lived by example, that the concept of 'gender roles' were irrelevant.
In our family, my father lived by example, that the concept of ‘gender roles’ were irrelevant.
My father was a doctor. Throughout his career he held the title of the ‘Chief Medical Officer’ in all the estate hospitals that he headed. He was an early riser. He believed in waking up with the sun. Every morning this CMO of a father woke up and made morning tea for my mother and himself. He also cut vegetables that my mother might need to use for the day while preparing meals.
My mother woke up around 6:30 am and joined him directly for morning tea where he kept the newspaper and biscuits ready on the table. They sat reading and overlooking the garden for an hour while making conversations and sipping the strong Assam tea as the morning softly illuminated the world around them.
In the evenings on many occasions my father would indulge us with an impromptu meal of puri (which we call Lusi in Assamese) and deeply stir fried potatoes. This, as with many others, became a home ritual that we loved. Given that the terrorism situation in Assam when I was growing up was so bad, it was a natural choice for children of many families to go out of the state to study and later create a career.
Quite naturally we left home. Whenever I came back home for the holidays my dad and mom always came to pick me from the railway station. The Delhi Dibrugarh Rajdhani Express reached Dibrugarh at 6:30 am. My parents always reached before that. And even before that, my father woke up at the crack of dawn (maybe at 4am since the sun rises at 4 am in the east ) and prepared the special stir fried potatoes and puri for breakfast; so that when we reached back home, we can simply dig in. More especially for me, who simply loved his cooking. He did it all for love.
I grew up in an environment where gender roles have never been defined. My father never felt anything uncomfortable about cooking for his family or doing the ‘n’ number of housework around the house. We all helped around in the house. The daughters of the house were raised not only to nurture a family, but also were given the opportunity to take on the world if we ever wished. The conversations on gender roles, taking women and men to pedestals just because they swap their role does not really make sense to me. For me, if you love someone, you do the needful. There is no teaching needed here.
As a human race, it is time that we evolved. It is time that we stopped having these conversations and understand that we are beyond the stone age where gender roles needed to be rigidly defined. This thought process will help create a society where individuals behave more humane, evolved and become someone who understands the meaning of loving another human completely.
Image source: Unsplash
A Social Media Content Writer by profession. A writer by heart. A genuine foodie. Simple by nature. Love to read, create paintings and cook. Have impossible dreams. At the moment, engaged in making those dreams read more...
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