Mom vs. best friend: A fine balance
So, have you walked on any tightropes recently? Without any balancing aids? Without a safety net? With the whole world watching your every step, and giving you free and unsolicited advice on that step and the next that you are about to take?
There is one person who goes through this daily: Mom. Especially when she has a pre-teen / teen-aged daughter. And especially of this generation. The previous generation mother was one who got married really early in life, too busy watching her kids grow up to realize she was growing old, fast. The next generation, in contrast, is one where women are not marrying until well into their late-20s and sometimes not until their 30s. And, in try trying not to grow up themselves, they will end up being old by the time their kid(s) enter(s) teenage.
That’s why the meeting of this Gen M(om) and Gen Y daughters is filled with situations and standards that are very unique. No other generation of daughters has been born and brought up in “fully” liberalized India as has the one born after 1990. Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, V.P. Singh (and not just Nehru and Gandhi) are as much a part of the history books to them as ATMs, the internet, mobile phones, IM, FB, Twitter, KFC and pubs are an integral part of their contemporary socio-cultural fabric (and not some futuristic Asimovian scenarios).
In the smaller towns and cities, an archetype such as “Vijaya from Vizag” is trying to balance conflict between tradition and modernity, between small-town-mindedness and the globalization of opportunity.
For the affluent, big city archetype, such as Sarika from South Delhi, the job is no more enviable. Her most challenging conflict is the one between the immense freedom (and money) she easily allows her daughter and the lack of time to pay closer attention to her parenting duties.
Both Vijaya and Sarika are constantly trying to straddle the roles of best friend and mom, albeit in different ways, in completely different socio-economic strata.
In this, they’re up against a few odds. Today’s mom has to deal with her own 40-going-on-14 mindset, where she’s trying to turn the clock back on the years both for herself and to be closer to her daughter. Then there’s her daughter who’s smack in the middle of creating her own identity, shaking off constraining ties, and is especially wary of parents who want to know too much about what she’s up to.
For all this though, sometimes the lines do start to blur for those watching about which ones are friends and which ones are mother and daughter.
Together they might go to the same gym, occasionally enjoy swooning over Shahid Kapur, go to the Body Shop, shun the imported creams, preferring instead the Himalaya range of herbals and organics. They might even wear the same kind of short kurtis from Fab India or t-shirts from Bennetton (size: Medium). On holiday together, sometimes the daughter will tell Mom the importance of a certain heritage temple to India and her own identity. Other times, Mom will help the daughter unearth the fashion find of the year in the by-lanes of Coimbatore.
The thing is, this is not so much the norm as it’s probably the exception. Both of them would like to firmly draw a Laxman Rekha between the roles of mom and daughter. Because there are plenty of metaphorical Ravans on either side.
It’s highly unlikely that daughters will “friend” their mom on Facebook. Equally, a real amma would probably not be okay with a dragon tattoo on the small of her daughter’s back.
Questions abound. How short can a skirt be before it becomes too short? When does a t-shirt caption stop being funny and start being too saucy for public consumption? When does “space” become too small to be private and too large to be public? How long can Mom hold onto her (now imaginary) umbilical cord and yet not lose her daughter to the world?
Just as Mom is not going to find any gharelu nuskhe to help her out here, daughters won’t find easy answers in the latest issue of Cosmo Girl.
One thing is for sure: today’s Indian Mom is a great example of one of the toughest balancing acts. Sure, it’s not perfect. She’s swaying on the rope sometimes. She may appear to wobble occasionally. But she’s willing to tough it out. And whether she knows it now or not, her daughter, her occasional best friend, is waiting at journey’s end with this message: “My mom is my hero.
