If we have to be mentally well, we have to accept that we can’t be good at everything.” Rima Mukherji told a room full of working women and a few men. The session, being hosted at the IAM institute of hotel management in Sector V, dealt with mental wellness and women, and two mind healers were in conversation with Kushal Chatterjee, head of training and placement.
The discussion started with turning points in their own mental journeys.
Mukherji shared the time when she and her husband were residing in the UK as medical students — she was doing MRCP in psychology and he was working for his FRCS fellowship. “We would come home every two years. Once he brought back three sets of trousers. In those days of limited luggage, we had lots to carry back – achaar and whatnot. When I asked, he said those were to be darned by his mother. Two thoughts crossed my mind. First, I died of shame, wondering what my mother-in-law, an expert housewife, would be thinking about my capabilities, or lack of them. And second, I got angry thinking he could have done it himself as he was training to be a surgeon. On hearing my reservations, he calmly replied: ‘You don’t have to be able to do everything.” That thought caused a vital shift in my perspective,” said Mukherji.
Imaging by Sudeshna Banerjee
Objecting to the glut of adulatory messages on Women’s Day that portray women as all-rounders excelling in every sphere of life, she pointed out there was no such pressure of men’s day messages to be the perfect son, husband, brother and father.
IAM director Maitreyee Chaudhuri had pointed out at the outset how women face the pressure to be accomplished in every way — excel in cooking, do other domestic chores while competing with men at work who do not have these obligations at home. “And on top of that, we have to deal with hormonal fluctuations,” she pointed out.
Meenakshi Khorana Saha, developmental and rehabilitation psychologist, psychotherapist and hypnotherapist, urged women to find a purpose in life. “Once you do that, when multiple roles seek your time and attention, you will know how to prioritise,” she said.
Mukherji also spoke of the dangers of “people-pleasing behaviour”. “When a woman keeps doing things not because it gives her satisfaction but because she seeks approval of others, over time she will be taken for granted,” she warned.
Imaging by Sudeshna Banerjee
Women tend to go around collecting baggage of guilt, Mukherji said. “The pressure of balancing motherhood with a career is such that a woman feels guilty if she beats her child and ends up overcompensating,” she explained.
Women, surprisingly, may be the worst offenders themselves. “When I returned from the UK, a woman superintendent of a medical facility I was being interviewed at asked me if I could achieve work-life balance with an eight-year-old son at home. I asked her if she had wondered how I had done it for the last eight years.’ Women have to stop putting other women down,” Mukherji said.
The tendency to judge people based on skin colour, height and weight also came up. “A woman is first judged on her looks. If she is good-looking and her boss is male, people make snide comments attributing her success to factors beyond her professional competence,” Mukherji said, adding that empowered women were in a position to bring up children with the right values in this regard.
Men also need to get educated about menstruation for them to not take women as a mysterious entity, pointed out Saha. “A female colleague or classmate may react differently to a situation than a man as women have a different physiology. It should not be treated as abnormal behaviour,” she said.
Jokes on PMS also came up to show how a woman colleague might be made to feel uncomfortable at the workplace. "Why is it so tough for us women to give it back?" an audience member wondered. "Women try very hard to fit in, as we know how much it took us to reach there.
According to a survey, women give six times more time to house- work than men. We take a lot of shit in the process as we know that if we don't, there is bigger shit waiting for us out there," Saha responded, in bru- tal plainspeak.
Sanjukta Bose, director of the sis- ter institute International Institute of Hotel Management, who was present in the audience, brought up the issue of sexual abuse of children. "If the fa- ther or an uncle is the offender, even today many families try to downplay such acts," she said, while pointing out that not just girls, even boys could be abused.
#MeToo, it was acknowledged, was a great movement that helped create awareness.
Self first not selfish
Mukherji ended the discussion by advising women citing in-flight etiquette. "In emergencies, they ask us to put our own oxygen mask first before helping others. Women need to remember the same. We don't need to eat burnt or long leftover food that no one else will. We can go to sleep early if the men are watching a match late. Self-care is our own responsibility, and there is nothing selfish about it," she summed up.