A Young Girl In Motherhood

The story is about a young girl Hema from Kanpur who is a mother of 2 kids. She is a working mother who is equally diligent & involved in her household responsibilities & sometimes seems to be more busy than a CEO of a company. She gets up, sends one child to school, then another to play group, then rushes to gets household tasks done leaving almost no time for herself to get ready. After a tiring day at office, she jumps to the role of a mother with kids pouncing on her as if they have seen her after ages. She is completely exhausted by the bed time & is just waiting to see her naughty ones sleep. Now rather than sleeping herself, a young girl inside her is awake who goes in some fantasy world of her childhood & college. She revives the memories when she had a crush on one of his college mates who proposed her & then regrets on why she denied his proposal. She thinks about a lovely time of courtship with the person who is now her husband. She thinks about when she got a lovely message on Valentine's day from her students while she was a teacher in college 10 yrs back.

Suddenly the younger kid gets up & she switches back from Alice in Wonderland to a 24x7 working mother. After she puts him back to sleep, she is again in the other world. She wants to put makeup, brush her hair in a nice style & look pretty as in her college days though she hardly gets any time even to choose her clothes from the wardrobe, ending up wearing whatever she can find quickly. She wants to watch latest movies in theatre with cold drink & popcorn but ironically she does not even get a chance to switch on TV for herself. Cold drink is like a history to her considering that it is the one of the most wanted items of kids while they go out. She wants to spend hrs & hrs talking to her friends but the situation is that she gets to call her family just once or twice in a week. She wants to shop fancy dresses for herself but whenever she lands into market, she ends up buying vests,toys & diapers for the kids. She waits for weeks for the next shopping round but by that time, again a list of to-buy for kids is ready. There was a time when she did hrs of window shopping & now, even for necessary items, online shopping is the only option. Suddenly, she sees the clock striking 2 AM & she is blasted with the feeling that it is just 4 hrs more to sleep. She was among those who slept till 10 in the morning & still said 'I am sleep deprived' & now she has no such words even when she gets up at 6.

She feels sleepy the next day but there is no choice. The kids are not willing to sleep today & finally with a great effort, they are now asleep at 12 AM. She thinks whether to choose to sleep or do something that she is eagerly waiting for. After few minutes, she is uploading some pics on Facebook or listening to her favorite music. It seems that today also she has the plan to sleep at 2. She starts watching a daily soup which was a must watch for her when she was newly married. There comes a scene when a mother is pampering her daughter & making lovely cake for her & gifting a beautiful frock to her on the birthday. Childhood just starts flowing in Hema's blood with the lovely memories of her mother & she suddenly realizes that somebody is calling “Mumy” in the room & jumping towards her lap. She makes milk for her little one when she is getting tempted for the cake she just saw. Somehow, she pacifies the child & puts him back to sleep. She has a craving for chocolates now that she got from her office the previous day. There was a time when 5 chocolates in the fridge meant 5 for herself only but now she resists herself from eating that so that kids can munch on them. She gets up & eats a toffee from her office bag.

Next day is Saturday when she is thankfully playing just the role of a mother & a home maker. She takes her kids out to park & is running behind them, listening to their demands & is fully involved with them. There is a long queue on the swing & as it gets free, she rushes to grab it, this time not for herself but for his elder kid. She imagines herself swinging high & high as she did in childhood with her sister. She sees her kids playing in water & laughing loudly. The sounds of her childhood friends start echoing in her ears when she played with them in monsoon. Suddenly she notices somebody staring at her since long & she realizes it is the person who has been chasing her in the park since 1 month. While her kids are calling her for water, she is just thinking that “Am I still good looking?”. She has got this feeling after years & the young girl inside her is now live. Days and days are passing by & she is struggling between a young heart & a mature mother.