In the time I was not publishing regularly, some of you sent me emails enquiring about my well-being. I want you to know that you made my heart very full with your kindness. I have the best readers!
I even came across the notion that ‘Mahima has stopped writing Womaning’.
A lot has been happening in my personal life which was behind this hiatus, but I am definitely still writing, and Womaning still has a lot of work to do.
So a more accurate statement would be ‘Mahima paused writing Womaning for a bit while she did some long overdue work on herself’.
Sheesh, I am beginning to sound a lot like an infamous ‘liver’.
If you don’t get this joke, well done for avoiding the poopy corners of the internet.
Anyway, I apologize again for vanishing without a word - much like the women whose stories you will read today.
This piece is all about friendship.
Last week, I was visiting family in Pune. Before the trip, I made a list of all the friends I would like to meet on the trip. I was even ambitious enough to imagine meeting some Mumbai-based friends somewhere on the highway connecting us.
After self-pruning for doability, my list had about ten people on it.
My husband grew up in Pune and I have seen him meet multiple friends from multiple different circles over breakfast, lunch, coffee, and dinner when he is there. So averaging one friend a day on a ten-day trip did not seem all that ambitious in contrast.
However, my list soon became sentient and started pruning itself.
A Mumbai friend canceled because she had to take her kid to a birthday party on the day we had decided to drive down to meet.
A Pune friend was out of town for a work trip.
Another had houseguests over so she could not find time to step out all week.
I met one friend for dinner - because she could only get away from her job and kids at dinnertime. But that was too close to my son’s bedtime, so I spent that meal looking more at my watch than my friend’s face.
I met another friend for a lunch date. My husband was traveling so I took my kid along for this one. Moms reading this already know what happens next - a cranky toddler who insisted I talk to him instead of my friend the whole time. So our conversation was 50% baby talk - which my friend found understandably dull, but gracefully tolerated.
And that is how my ten exciting dates became two half-hearted ones.
After this, I gave up on The Great Pune Friends Reunion of 2024 altogether.
‘Maybe it was not meant to be on this trip’, I told myself, in staunch denial that staying in touch with friends has been a luxury I have not been able to afford for far too long now.
If my hot and happening social life sounds familiar to you, you are likely a wife or a mother.
Or your friends are.
Or both of you are and - best case scenario - you will see each other in the 2030s.
“From being sisters, we became acquaintances”
Avni told me about her friendships as a 33-year-old single woman. At this age, most of her girlfriends are married, and a few are mothers.
“Leela and I have been the closest friends for 15 years. She came from a very conservative family and we crossed many major milestones together. I was by her side as she revealed to her family that a relative had abused her. I supported her when she had to convince her family to ‘allow’ her to pursue higher studies in the US.
We were each other’s family for years and years. Even after she moved to the US, we stayed as close as ever - through ups and downs, at work and in relationships.”
A few years back, Leela got married.
“After the wedding, she moved back to India - just 20 kms from my home, in fact. And yet, the distance between us grew almost overnight. She stopped telling me about her life, or even asking about mine. I found myself relegated to the background in her life, which now centered entirely on her husband and in-laws. When I tried to tell her my feelings about this, she snapped and told me she just doesn’t have the time.
From being sisters, we are now more like acquaintances.
This is the story of how I lost the closest friend I have ever had in my adult life. A version of this story has played out over and over again as each of my girlfriends got devoured by marriage or motherhood.”
“Staying in touch with a friend should not feel like committing a crime.”
A few years back, Anusha’s friend, Zoya, married her partner, Ali.
“Zoya is one of my closest friends, but we lived in different cities. We used to speak on the phone regularly, but that got rarer once she got married. During the pandemic, she moved to Ali's family home and our calls completely stopped. Her time was mostly spent with her in-laws, managing the household, and other domestic responsibilities. But we still wanted to stay in touch, so we communicated over chat for months.”
Recently, Zoya and Ali moved back to the city after their workplaces stopped offering the option to work from home.
“Now, we can speak on the phone again. But last week, when her father-in-law was visiting, I noticed a dip in our calls again. On my birthday, she not only missed calling me at midnight like she usually does, but managed to call me only two days later with profuse apologies.
Last night, she called me and it seemed like a scene straight out of an espionage thriller.
She told me, ‘Papa is out so I came downstairs to take a walk and call you. Wearing a shawl to cover my head and the phone if he accidentally sees me.’
Just a few seconds later, she said, ‘Wait, Ali is calling. Missed it. Now the domestic help is calling. Let me call you back.’
She hung up, then called after a minute, panting, ‘She called to tell me Papa is home. I am taking the backdoor to run indoors before he sees me.’
Calling your closest friend should not feel like committing a crime.
I have never heard of a man who has to even think twice before calling a friend, let alone jump through such nonsensical hoops.”
The bahu who dances on the internet no more
Kavita and Pranjali were friends from college.
“Our hostel rooms shared a balcony so we used to be quite close. After graduation, we stayed in touch over social media. Pranjali is a beautiful dancer, and I would leave fangirling comments over her reels.
In 2021, she got engaged, and the reels suddenly stopped. When I asked her about it, she said, ‘My future in-laws don't like me making dance reels. They don’t want their relatives taunting them about how their bahu (daughter-in-law) dances on the internet.’ Which seemed like their words, not hers - but I stopped asking after that.”
A few months later, Kavita planned a girls’ night with Pranjali.
“I live in Delhi and she was visiting for work. We planned to have dinner together and then crash at my place. We were dying to catch up after ages.
Just as we were walking into the restaurant, Pranjali’s fiancé called her. He told her to ‘go home soon since Delhi is not safe for women at night’. She told him not to worry, that she was in a high-end restaurant, in a safe part of town, and with a trusted friend who lived nearby. Unconvinced, he disconnected the call.
By the time we got to our table, her phone was ringing again. This time, it was her future mother-in-law, calling to reiterate her son’s insistence that she must go home soon.
My poor friend sat there witha menu in her hand, unable to order. We ate the whole dinner in silence as her MIL and fiancé kept calling her like this, one after another. The calls got more aggressive as the evening wore on. She was having a full-blown fight with her fiancé when we were in the auto home, and I fell asleep that night to the sound of the argument raging on.”
After that, Kavita only met Pranjali at her wedding.
“She quit her job to organize her wedding and focus on her household responsibilities after that. After the wedding, she relocated to her husband’s hometown. I haven't met her since her wedding in 2021.”
“A résumé full of excuses for losing touch”
Prakriti told me a similar story of how she had lost touch with most of her friends from school and college after her marriage to Vishal.
“We come from the same hometown and went to the same college. Yet, Vishal is in touch with many of his friends from school and college, while I have lost touch with all of mine.”
Prakriti says that she only noticed this when I asked her about her friendships for this piece.
“Until now, I had always thought that I was bad at maintaining friendships.
But now that you have made me think about it, I am realizing that after Vishal and I got married, I embraced the ‘your friends are my friends’ trope. But it was never reciprocated by him.
As a result, his friends became ‘our friends’, but my friends ended up getting cut out of our lives.
Whenever we visit our hometown, we prioritize meeting each one of his friends, and meeting my friends is somehow never on the agenda.
Motherhood of course made things a hundredfold difficult. There never seemed to be enough time for me to stay in touch with friends.”
Over time, the chasm between friends became laced with insecurity.
“I will admit, after decades of not being in touch, it started feeling like I better have ‘something to show’ for it. If I ever tried reconnecting with an old friend, I would feel the need to justify why I lost touch with them with the requisite ‘success’ on the personal and professional fronts.
‘Here is my latest promotion’, or ‘here are the photos of my happy kids’ - even meeting an old friend became an exercise in showboating. This made maintaining these friendships feel all the more exhausting.”
In contrast, Vishal and his friends are literally growing old together.
“They never lost touch, so there is no need for them to prepare a résumé full of excuses for it.
They will be friends till they are old men, reminiscing about the good old days over drinks. Their wives will likely be frying pakodas for them in the kitchen, making polite conversation with each other, trying to fill the hole in their life where real friends go.”
“His friends were never hers to begin with”
Anika shares the story of her friend, Amit, who got married to Sonali a decade ago.
“Sonali moved from the US to India because Amit’s job was in Mumbai. Amit was a complete party animal. He had a lot of friends and he hung out with them all the time. We - Amit’s friends and their spouses - soon became Sonali’s entire social circle. She would make a lot of effort nurturing her relationship with us - hosting us for parties, never forgetting our birthdays, etc.
I knew that Sonali had some college friends in Mumbai. But she would say she ‘never has the time to meet them’, even though she always made time for us.
After they had a baby, Sonali’s social life got even more restricted. Amit continued to go out to meet his friends, play tennis, and go swimming with them. Sonali became busy raising their child.”
Last year, Amit and Sonali’s marriage fell apart.
“It was a rough divorce. It was even harder for Sonali because she had no trusted friends or confidantes to lean upon in this difficult time. Her ‘friends’ were never hers to start with as their (our) loyalties lay with Amit.
Eventually, she moved cities and is now rebuilding her life from scratch - including reaching out to her old friends from school and college. All those years she spent building her relationships with Amit’s friends were a complete waste.”
‘Life happens’ (but only to women)
Asha went to an all-girls school, a college, a CA coaching class, and managed to make as many as 40-50 great friends from all these circles.
“I have always been an extrovert, so this was not hard for me to do. I remember - back in those years - my birthdays took a lot of planning, because I had to give multiple treats to friends from multiple circles on a single day. I was proud that I was able to maintain so many genuine friendships despite the busy schedule of my studies and CA preparation.”
After her marriage, Asha moved across multiple cities with her husband’s job.
“Slowly but surely, I started losing touch with my friends. I knew my circle was growing smaller.
At first, I thought maybe this is how things are. This is what people mean when they say ‘life happens’. But this applies differently to men and women.
Once you get married, as an Indian woman, your relatives multiply. Your husband’s friendships also become yours to maintain. As my household responsibilities increased, maintaining my friendships just kept slipping lower and lower down the list of my priorities.
Close friends - whose birthdays I would celebrate with a surprise midnight cake at their doorstep - had now turned into annual birthday text buddies. In just a few years, all but a handful of my friends had disappeared.
But the harsh reality is that they did not disappear, I did.”
A few years later, Asha became a mother.
“After motherhood, even the handful of friends I had left dwindled away. When I was suffering postpartum depression, I desperately wanted to talk to a friend. I remember picking up the phone but not knowing whose number to dial. I had literally no one left.
From having 50 friends at one point, to not having a single soul to call was a big shock.
It cut even deeper that I regularly saw social media updates of men from my childhood catching up. All the women from our friend circle had vanished - claimed, like I was, by marriage and motherhood. The men were married and fathers too, but that didn’t seem to matter.”
Men pulling men down from caregiving like…
Asha is now making a conscious effort to prioritize her friendships again.
“When you get down to it, you find that it only takes one call to rekindle an old friendship. Of course, I will probably never go back to having 50 friends again. But at least I now have five!”
Be a bad friend, or a ‘bad mother’.
Swati recounts an incident that still haunts her - a regret she thinks she will carry her entire life.
“Komal, and I met in college in India and became the closest friends. After graduating, we both went to the same institute in Paris for our post-graduation. We came together to this foreign country and culture - supporting each other at every turn. That has been our relationship for over a decade now.
When I married Akshay, Komal was a huge source of love and support at our wedding. She was the life of the party, and an active part of the organization efforts that went behind each ceremony. She became integrated with my entire family, like a sister.”
A few years later, Komal invited Swati to her wedding.
“She had gone through years of turmoil because her parents had not approved of her partner. It had taken her a long time to get their blessings. So, in that sense, this was an even more momentous occasion for her than any other bride-to-be.
Her wedding was scheduled in October and she informed me in January itself.”
It so happened that Akshay’s best friend was also getting married in India just a week after Komal’s wedding.
“We had a two-year-old child by this time. Traveling all over India with our toddler right after a pandemic would have been complicated. So we made a plan that seemed more efficient.”
Akshay’s parents were planning to visit the couple in September.
“We figured that after his parents were settled at our home, I would travel alone to attend Komal’s wedding and come back. A week after that, Akshay would travel to attend his friend’s wedding.
Akshay’s parents would be in Paris through all this - to provide support for our son’s caregiving as we traveled, one at a time.
This way, both of us would get to attend our respective best friend’s wedding. Our child’s schedule would remain undisturbed. Everybody wins.
Everyone agreed it was the perfect plan, and we booked all the tickets. I was excited to make my best friend’s big day special, just as she had made mine.”
Akshay’s parents arrived in Paris as scheduled.
“We gave them enough time to bond with their grandson, get to know his schedule, his food preferences, etc. By the time my travel came up, they were well-familiar with every part of his caregiving. With Akshay around, the three of them should have been quite comfortable handling the baby.
But a few days before Swati’s flight to India, her son came down with the flu.
“It was a minor cold, but suddenly everyone at home started acting like there was no way that three people - the grandparents and the dad - could handle one child together. They started putting emotional pressure on me for ‘leaving my child’ in this vulnerable state.
I assured them that such colds were common among children of this age, and since he was responding well to the medicines already, I was confident that he would be better soon.
But they kept saying, ‘How can we manage without the mother?’ As if the mother has a magic wand. As if I was abandoning my child with strangers and not his own family.
Ultimately, the pressure from all of them became so much that - one day before my flight to India - I was forced to cancel my tickets.
It has been years but it still pains me just to recount this.”
Next week, it was time for Akshay to travel to India for his friend’s wedding.
“This time, Akshay’s parents had a 180-degree change of stance. They repeatedly gave Akshay encouragement and assurances, like, ‘Just go, enjoy yourself!’, ‘It is your best friend’s wedding, such milestones are very important in life!’, ‘We will handle the baby. Don’t worry at all!’
It was unbelievably hurtful to see them encouraging him to go and enjoy himself, when, just a few days back, they had held me back from exactly the same milestone - probably an even bigger one for Komal, who needed her friends around even more since her own parents were only grudgingly attending her wedding.”
After Komal returned from the wedding, Swati met her and apologized profusely for missing the wedding.
“I felt - and still feel - deeply pained and ashamed for not being there for her. She was understanding, but visibly downcast. She told me that it was not even just me who had not made it.
Since Komal was the last in our friend circle to get married, she told me that none of her girlfriends showed up at her wedding. Every single married woman was held up by her family or husband in the name of caregiving responsibilities, like I was.
In contrast, Akshay’s friend’s wedding had a full attendance of all his buddies. They all partied hard and drank late into the night throughout the wedding week. It didn’t matter that many of them were married and fathers too. I suppose all their families encouraged them to ‘go and enjoy yourself’ as Akshay’s parents did.”
Ye dosti…
There is no denying it - the rules for friendship are simply different for men and women.
A wife or mother’s friendships are made to take a backseat - either by direct diktat or through indirect emotional manipulation.
Men - unencumbered by such external social pressures, inner guilts, or sometimes even an iota of caregiving responsibilities - continue to enjoy their friendships often just as well as their bachelor days.
For men, friendships are considered a source of companionship and positive energy, as they should be for everyone. At worst, a man’s friendships may get a bit less wild after marriage or fatherhood. At best, they are further strengthened and enriched by their partners who go the extra mile, host parties, connect with the friends and their spouses, etc.
But for married women and mothers, friendships are usually considered a luxury. An indulgence that is tolerated at best, and actively discouraged or disallowed at worst.
So now that we are at the fag end of January, and - I think - it is safe to assume that we have all failed at our workout and dietary resolutions:
Can every woman reading this resolve to reconnect with one lost friend this year?
For bonus points: Gasp, one coffee or meal with a friend every month of 2024?
Can every man reading this resolve to encourage the women in his life to do this? Start by taking on more caregiving responsibilities to create space on her plate for her friendships?
For bonus points:Gasp, make ‘your friends are my friends’ a two-way street? Fry up some metaphorical pakodas while she hangs out with her friends in your home?
Let me know how it goes!
In the meantime, watch this space for a surprise Womaning announcement coming soon - my version of a résumé of excuses for losing touch with you these last few months.
🔥 If you are an aspiring writer - or even someone who just wants to make their emails shine - check out my storytelling course, which includes writing workshops and one-on-one mentoring to help you write better, write consistently, and launch your own newsletter.
This piece is amazing. Although, I also went through this phase where I ended up having no friends after my daughter was born. I managed to find a few, but sometimes, my husband would say when I go out with my friends, "What will I do at home? Chuck this plan and let's go out." Sometimes I am shamed for wanting to have a life outside of marriage and kid, wanting to travel alone on a work trip. I still do what I want to, but it seems like we are made to feel lucky to have such a husband and in-laws in India. These are things which should be bare minimum, by the way.
I agree, men can just live their lives and maintain their friendships, while women have to be the bahu, and mother first, and then a person. It's sad to see women have to live like single mothers while having a husband and in-laws... I really hope I won't have to go through that experience.
Though, I will say, I think male friendships are easier to maintain for the sole reason that they're just For Fun. I think that women are far more involved in their friendships, we hold each other accountable a lot and it's important enough to us that we risk confrontations and negative feelings. Men (in my experience) don't do this, if their friend does/says something shitty, they "live and let live" and maybe just tolerate it. Meanwhile they mascerade this tolerance as "brotherhood" and say that women just don't form the same deep bonds as them.
This piece is amazing. Although, I also went through this phase where I ended up having no friends after my daughter was born. I managed to find a few, but sometimes, my husband would say when I go out with my friends, "What will I do at home? Chuck this plan and let's go out." Sometimes I am shamed for wanting to have a life outside of marriage and kid, wanting to travel alone on a work trip. I still do what I want to, but it seems like we are made to feel lucky to have such a husband and in-laws in India. These are things which should be bare minimum, by the way.
I agree, men can just live their lives and maintain their friendships, while women have to be the bahu, and mother first, and then a person. It's sad to see women have to live like single mothers while having a husband and in-laws... I really hope I won't have to go through that experience.
Though, I will say, I think male friendships are easier to maintain for the sole reason that they're just For Fun. I think that women are far more involved in their friendships, we hold each other accountable a lot and it's important enough to us that we risk confrontations and negative feelings. Men (in my experience) don't do this, if their friend does/says something shitty, they "live and let live" and maybe just tolerate it. Meanwhile they mascerade this tolerance as "brotherhood" and say that women just don't form the same deep bonds as them.