Revisiting Myself: a Once-potted Plant with a Dictaphone?

Shandana,

Interestingly enough, new studies have reported that the brains of women increase during pregnancy and motherhood, not decrease.

Also, I have plenty of intellectual women friends who could not wait to hand their wailing children to their husbands and rush off to teach, write, manage programs. A former advisor said to me once if she didnt have her graduate courses to teach at night, she`d end up strangling her boys. So...why the self doubt?

Others may congratulate you on the self deprecatory metaphors-sorry, I can`t.

An excellent read...
Can sense it all. Very True.

Shandana,
this piece echoes through the now-empty corridors of my own past. Babies are the ultimate naysayers to their mothers` intellectual growth but enormously fulfilling emotional highs.
This is an absolutely brilliant summing up of fears and fantasies and the reasons why women do not become heads not just of advertising agencies, or the UN or even famous artists. Can you imagine a baby crawling around where ther is wet paint flowing?
The only consolation I can offer is that babies become grown men and women and you recede into their past, or into the dark corners of their mutilated imaginations and psyches!!
Revathy Gopal

Funny AND powerful! Super writing, Shandana.

I was now a vaginal bobby sock filled with shifting sands; a menacing uterine baton with a mind of its own.

Wowzers!

Shandana,
You write:
``I am no longer an intelligent woman. I am a nearsighted biological function.``
But this piece suggests otherwise.

``I liked change better when it happened to other people.``
Maybe that`s your `original` sin-- yearning for a becomingness that essentially, you know deep inside, can never be fullfilled. (Is that the ride? hmm...)

But maybe it`s all vanity anyway. Maybe.

Look at the bright side. By all accounts here, you`re still a brilliant writer. And now there are potentially two more in the making -- whether there`s a writing gene or not! :)

There`s a great book by Camille Paglia that I`d like to lend you.

best wishes,
P.

Shandana,

Thanks! It has been years since I read a piece that held me. Thank you. Briliiant. I somehow remembered a quote from Sylvia Plath...``all women love a brute!``... This has that dark brodding that flashes with incite and insight...so Plathish...in theme. I like your dash of humour that spices up the final piece.

It was illuminating! PLease write.

HN

Shandana, you are one amazing writer. If you keep contributing regularly rather than pop up once in a blue moon, my visits to chowk FP will increase.

BTW, this seemed like a logical prose sequel to:

Bloated Woman
Shandana Minhas
February 18, 2002

Till now weeks were measured

in work assignments,

visits to parents,

farscape episodes,

leg hair growth,

substances abused

and manic episodes.

Now weeks aren’t measured

but meted out

in fetal inches,

meetings

missed,

as heart rate

accelerates,

belly

bloats.

…

Bloated woman once

floated free,

unhindered by

the mysteries

of diaper changing

spit exchanging

feeding times

and baby crimes.

Bloated woman

will you now be

up to task

and problem free

in time for this

delivery?

And bloated woman,

if you’re not,

can you return

to trouble spot?

Extinguish light,

dampen desire?

Perhaps defer

this imminent fire?

Bloated woman

won’t you speak?

Why so silent?

Why so meek?

…

Bounce around

ultrasound

baby.

Smack down

this brown

mummy.

I know where you live.
.....

That last verse is my favourite. BTW, what you went (and are going) through is true not just for women, though of course it`sobviously stronger since you do the actual biological part of it! Men **also** face the old family-versus-career runabout sometime around the time we turn 30. It tends to fade away by around 35, by which time we have realised that:
- we aint doing that well in our careers; and/or
- our families hate us anyway!

Keep writing, slink!