I wanted to write this blog just after I turned 30 but my grandmother passed away and I postponed it. Had I written it back then it would have been an optimistic one, but now almost three years after I postponed it my life in 30s is looking very depressing partly because I am stressed and worn out and partly because I am being subject to unnecessary tortures. But ofcourse I should always remember that I am a woman and that too single at ~33 and independent and many people including my own parents have trouble digesting it.
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1) Parents : Let me give my first impression of life after 30. Life after 30 brings you a lot of stress not because you want it but mainly because your parents are aging. This is a stress which you have to come to terms with and will make you lose your sleep wondering if they are going to die soon out of their ailments and how you will cope when they are gone. But then despite all the care you give them in times of dire necessity like them being admitted in hospitals for weeks or months, the same parents take you for granted and hurl all kinds of hurtful words and actions at you that you come to a mental limbo of it is what it is. According to (atleast some Indian parents) them their children are their eternal slaves who have no right to live independently. Even if they are 30+ individuals the lives of their children is in their hands. You are doomed if you are woman - unmarried and do not depend on your parents at all for anything. Your parents' "reputation" and "social status" obviously rests upon the "slender shoulders" of your marital status.
An unmarried woman in her 30s is considered as god knows what - harming their reputation by her parents, disobedient by others and a loser by members of the society who don't even have anything to do with you!!! Things will be worse if you happen to pursue a career in research. Imagine how it feels if your mother has been hospitalised for 2 months continous for CKD, the first major stress in your pre-30 life and post 30 life. Next year your father gets hospitalised for a month. The second major stress in your 30+ life. Both affect your peace of mind and you lose sleep. You rush off both times to take care of things back home, and they get ok ok and everyone adjusts to the new equilibrium, the toll is solely on your health and sleep. And who gets the blame for not sleeping at night? You.
You can't sleep at night. And who blames you first for this? The same people about whom you are concerned. Well that teaches the lessons that you should not concern yourself over anything or anyone. People are in general ungrateful and tend to forget what you have done for them, very soon.
You are taken for granted for ever. The loss of your three months of your academic career is forgotten, because well people think that women go to higher education just for name and fame and social status. You, out of fear for their health do not apply for any foreign post doc (which is an unwritten criterion to secure a job anywhere in India) and join an institute with an admin system which is beating the hell out of you and what do you hear from your parents? "You should have applied for a pdf abroad while you were doing your first pdf", as if none of the hospitalisations or near death experiences happened!! Who is the fool here? And when you actually get a pdf abroad you are forbidden from going there in the name of god knows what and out of concerns especially for the health of the same parents you do not go there but are left to struggle in your institute which after 1.5 years of confinement in hostel orders you to find an apartment outside the campus when you have only 6 months tenure left!! As if one's life didn't have enough problems.
On top of all these stress there are hurtful words and behaviours to handle when you come home once a while, because of course you are unmarried. That is the only thing eveybody including your own parents see about you. (When I was a child all people could see was that I have an extra tooth in my front row and all people ever saw about me was that one odd tooth which is obviously not aesthetically pleasing. They never saw that I was class topper or district topper or decent in my studies. All they could see was my tooth.) Similarly, all everybody including your parents can see now is the "negative/sad/depressing" (according to them) that you are unmarried! Even young doctors in a hospital cannot digest the fact that a 30+ woman is unmarried. :/ Nobody sees the fact that you have a PhD in high energy physics, have 3 years of post doctoral experience, can do photography, can write a blog and are not depending on anyone for my livelihood. No. All they see is how "unfortunately" single you are!! And what is more ridiculous, your father thinks that if you stand up for my own rights, you am harming his reputation, because he is an undeniable product of the male chauvanist society. Your mother thinks that you should not speak against any atrocitites you have to face verbal or mental, because speaking against anyone who attacks you is un-PhD-PDF like!!
I want to say "What the hell."
How is one person's reputation the responsibility of their daughter? What has it got to do with her marital status? Apparently "people" are asking them both if a woman has "settled" somewhere or if there is any "progress" in her "life". Note the "". Those are words for which these "people aka society" has some stupid definitions gauged according to their standards. And your parents are stupid enuogh to tolerate these bullies and believe that you are a loser becasue you are unmarried and ruin their "reputation/social status" by being well you! Why can't your parents ask in return what those bullies are doing in their lives or what their children are doing in theirs apart from getting married and reproducing (no offence to anyone who do so, but please stop gauging other people's lives with your uniform scale)? People should understand that marriage is not a mandatory thing especially for a woman!! It is a choice! But then people have trouble understanding the meaning of that word espeacially if a woman makes it. Like the young doctor I met 2 days ago in the hospital had trouble understanding that I am single by "choice" and had to reiterate twice that it is my CHOICE; a lady doctor who gave unsoclicited "advice" that after marriage my responsibilites are going to go up (as if I don't have any responsibility in my life right now), there will always be someone or the other who will have trouble digesting the fact that a woman in her 30s is unmarried and still has a life of her own!! It is your choice whether to let the bullies into your head and take it out on your sole daughter or be proud of the fact that she has a PhD and has 3 years of PDF experience, at times other than when you want to accuse her of something.
But you cannot obviously change any of the mindsets of stubborn people. Even if you stay away from home most of the time, minding your own business and go home only once or twice a year, all you get is ungrateful behaviour from parents who take you for granted and hurl all kinds of abuses and accusations at you because you are single and they can't digest it. Sometimes this makes me wonder about parents who commit honor killings. Nobody - even your own parents have the right to accuse you, staying away from home minding your own business, of ruining their social status and "reputation". To everyone outside your life may be perfect, especially if you are a single child, others thing you have everything. The truth is, you have nothing. You never knew happiness in your childhood. It was always filled with fights and quarells and unnecessary gossips by gossip mongering old women inside and outside the home. Now that you have become 30+ and your parents have retired and have nothing better to do in their lives than to eat your head because of some stupid bullies in the society, you are being made a scapegoat of their pointless accusations.
As much as you hate your parents for fighting you also love them and hope that they would one day (atleast for a minute) behave normally. But they never understand this. According to them you love them only for their money or whatever material wealth they might have amassed. They believe that they "let" you do your PhD because they are "broadminded". Well to go for the entrance test of the same PhD you had to stage a protest locking yourself inside a room for 3 hours. Infact you had to fight for everything right from your first cycle to, MSc project to PhD entrance with your family just because of your gender. And now you are 30+, your own body is slowing down and is unable to handle stress, but are accused by anyone and everyone including your parents who fail to see the good things about you but brings the worst version of you out.
If someone brings out the worst in you, they are not the ones who really love you or care for you. Your parents' love for you was always based on how well I performed in exams, whether you scored first or last in school or in college or whether you followed their "life plans" for you. Since you have not followed any of their plans, you have become an unacceptable daughter in their eyes even if you are the only one who will fly down to take care of them while they are hospitalised in near fatal situations. Wait! According to them you flying down in the moments of dire necessity was nothing worth being grateful for, because you are unmarried. And since you are unmarried, your actions and life have no value. So much for gratefulness. If they wanted a son instead of a daughter they should have abandoned you as soon as you were born and should have adopted a son.
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2) Non-parents : "You have had enough education. It is high time you got a job. You could have done a PhD back home." According to some people in your life your PhD is an ornament to find a groom because ofcourse you are a woman. According to them there is no difference between the PhD you do back in some place locally and nationally! Afterall it is an ornamental degree according to them. As soon as you get that degree you should milk it for benefit. Post doc is unnecessary according to them and passion does not have any meaning! Oh yes. Passion. The sole reason why you went to pursue a career in high energy physics. Your sole aim is to study till you die. You cannot afford to stop at any time. But what use is it telling these to people who cannot understand the meaning of what passion means? For them you doing PhD away from home, in another state was your parents' fault because they didn't put you in shackles and did not make you the slave of their insurmountable wills! (Oh yes! The world thinks that it was because of the broad mindedness of your parents that you did PhD. Not because you staged the 3 hour closed door protest to write the entrace exam and passed it and worked hard for the next 7 years!)
Sometimes you can't figure out the reasons why people churn out statements like these which ridicules "passion" and that have studied enough and should get a job somewhere. Your entire career is a research career. So where will be your career if you abandon it for some teaching job (teaching job is good, but teaching alone cannot satisfy you if you really want to do research all your life)? Are there enough number of colleges in India where proper research happens? In university centers research is there, but what about your subject in your state? Not many places have it. (The main reason why you did your PhD outside the state for which you are hearing accusations! Your field was nowhere in your state when you were applying for PhD!) What people who give these kinds of "advices" don't realise is that, the 30+ woman to whom they are saying these things to, knows very well what she wants out of her life and would appreciate if they stopped these kinds of uncalled for statements about her career. Oh! And to these people the fact that women in STEM are very few doesn't make any difference! Because their reality is different and they are trying to impose it on a 30+ woman because she is unmarried.
Now you can see that the major problem a woman faces after her 30s is being unmarried. As if she has committed a horrid crime by being single!!! Even her institute had stupid rules that unmarried post docs won't be given HRA, at some point of time!! (The same rule which the institute used to make the post docs stay in hostels from where they are being forced to vacate now!!)
What I cannot understand is the following. What problem do have people including one's own parents have with an unmarried woman? Nobody is asking for respect (oh yeah as if these people will ever treat a woman with respect - men and women included). All one is asking is non-interference. Parents cannot solve grave problems like accommodation problems of a person in her 30s. If people cannot solve a problem they should not blame the ones being made the victim of that problem. You complain about being evicted from hostels and the dean's refusal to meet and hear your side. What your parents tell you is completely irrational. They blame you. That you had not put enough effort to meet the dean who is throwing you out!! Then why don't they pick up the phone and call the dean and tell him not to evict you from the hostel? That nobody does. If people cannot offer any help or a solution to the problem at hand the least they can do is not to indulge in victim blaming. This blaming and rude behaviour becomes sharply visible when you are 30+. When you need moral support from someone that is the one thing especially your parents fail to provide to a 30+ person.
You are dead worried that you will be thrown out of the hostel with your things. People laugh at you for being concerned about this. Well they are not being thrown out of any hostel so they can laugh. You have 1.5 years worth things in a room. You are blamed for getting those things!! What is this? A 30+ woman cannot buy things for herself? If she buys novels it is a problem, if she buys text books it is a problem, if she buys a camera it is a problem, if she undergoes a health check up it is a problem. Please tell me what is not a problem according to you? People should keep their delusions aside that a woman whether 30+ or - is obliged to "obey" the crap you ask her to do. If is her life, she can think for herself. And if you cannot offer moral support, at times when it really is needed, please keep quiet.
A 30+ person, especially a single woman pursuing a research career realises that her family are not her actual supporters but only and only her friends are. Many of the problems 30+ single women in research face are the same. Accusations of being single, illogical questions and comments by people who have no clue about the stresses you have to deal with, real health problems (uterus is not the only organ in a woman's body) even if they are unmarried, work load etc.
In the midst of all these harshness to 30+ single women with a research career, what the people who are being rude to them are deliberately choosing to forget is that these women (including me) have a career which they love. And there are so many things about this career and the environment of the institutes where they pursue these careers which puts a lot of extra stress on them. As if ailing parents is not enough stress. A person who has crossed 30s is like a bird learning to fly. It has been harshly thrown out of its nest to be taught flying. Flying we will learn ofcourse but the path is stressful for sure.
Yes. Stress is a word which was not there is the 20s even during PhD days. Sometimes when you are 30+ you find that your body is unable to handle it. The world can blame your inability to sleep at night, that you miss breakfast, that you are becoming obese because of your habits, but nobody is doing anything to understand that you are stressed by various things in life and your body cannot just shut down because you are worried about your career, where you will live ultimately and in the near future you are going to be evicted from your hostel and has to find a house immediately or else you will be forced to quit your career and live back home with people who will make your life a hell for the rest of your life. But well, these blamers did not deal with what you are dealing with in their lives, chose to tread easy paths and may be content with their life choices which brought them to their present lives (where they are accusing you of ruining their reputation :/ ).
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1) Parents : Let me give my first impression of life after 30. Life after 30 brings you a lot of stress not because you want it but mainly because your parents are aging. This is a stress which you have to come to terms with and will make you lose your sleep wondering if they are going to die soon out of their ailments and how you will cope when they are gone. But then despite all the care you give them in times of dire necessity like them being admitted in hospitals for weeks or months, the same parents take you for granted and hurl all kinds of hurtful words and actions at you that you come to a mental limbo of it is what it is. According to (atleast some Indian parents) them their children are their eternal slaves who have no right to live independently. Even if they are 30+ individuals the lives of their children is in their hands. You are doomed if you are woman - unmarried and do not depend on your parents at all for anything. Your parents' "reputation" and "social status" obviously rests upon the "slender shoulders" of your marital status.
An unmarried woman in her 30s is considered as god knows what - harming their reputation by her parents, disobedient by others and a loser by members of the society who don't even have anything to do with you!!! Things will be worse if you happen to pursue a career in research. Imagine how it feels if your mother has been hospitalised for 2 months continous for CKD, the first major stress in your pre-30 life and post 30 life. Next year your father gets hospitalised for a month. The second major stress in your 30+ life. Both affect your peace of mind and you lose sleep. You rush off both times to take care of things back home, and they get ok ok and everyone adjusts to the new equilibrium, the toll is solely on your health and sleep. And who gets the blame for not sleeping at night? You.
You can't sleep at night. And who blames you first for this? The same people about whom you are concerned. Well that teaches the lessons that you should not concern yourself over anything or anyone. People are in general ungrateful and tend to forget what you have done for them, very soon.
You are taken for granted for ever. The loss of your three months of your academic career is forgotten, because well people think that women go to higher education just for name and fame and social status. You, out of fear for their health do not apply for any foreign post doc (which is an unwritten criterion to secure a job anywhere in India) and join an institute with an admin system which is beating the hell out of you and what do you hear from your parents? "You should have applied for a pdf abroad while you were doing your first pdf", as if none of the hospitalisations or near death experiences happened!! Who is the fool here? And when you actually get a pdf abroad you are forbidden from going there in the name of god knows what and out of concerns especially for the health of the same parents you do not go there but are left to struggle in your institute which after 1.5 years of confinement in hostel orders you to find an apartment outside the campus when you have only 6 months tenure left!! As if one's life didn't have enough problems.
On top of all these stress there are hurtful words and behaviours to handle when you come home once a while, because of course you are unmarried. That is the only thing eveybody including your own parents see about you. (When I was a child all people could see was that I have an extra tooth in my front row and all people ever saw about me was that one odd tooth which is obviously not aesthetically pleasing. They never saw that I was class topper or district topper or decent in my studies. All they could see was my tooth.) Similarly, all everybody including your parents can see now is the "negative/sad/depressing" (according to them) that you are unmarried! Even young doctors in a hospital cannot digest the fact that a 30+ woman is unmarried. :/ Nobody sees the fact that you have a PhD in high energy physics, have 3 years of post doctoral experience, can do photography, can write a blog and are not depending on anyone for my livelihood. No. All they see is how "unfortunately" single you are!! And what is more ridiculous, your father thinks that if you stand up for my own rights, you am harming his reputation, because he is an undeniable product of the male chauvanist society. Your mother thinks that you should not speak against any atrocitites you have to face verbal or mental, because speaking against anyone who attacks you is un-PhD-PDF like!!
I want to say "What the hell."
How is one person's reputation the responsibility of their daughter? What has it got to do with her marital status? Apparently "people" are asking them both if a woman has "settled" somewhere or if there is any "progress" in her "life". Note the "". Those are words for which these "people aka society" has some stupid definitions gauged according to their standards. And your parents are stupid enuogh to tolerate these bullies and believe that you are a loser becasue you are unmarried and ruin their "reputation/social status" by being well you! Why can't your parents ask in return what those bullies are doing in their lives or what their children are doing in theirs apart from getting married and reproducing (no offence to anyone who do so, but please stop gauging other people's lives with your uniform scale)? People should understand that marriage is not a mandatory thing especially for a woman!! It is a choice! But then people have trouble understanding the meaning of that word espeacially if a woman makes it. Like the young doctor I met 2 days ago in the hospital had trouble understanding that I am single by "choice" and had to reiterate twice that it is my CHOICE; a lady doctor who gave unsoclicited "advice" that after marriage my responsibilites are going to go up (as if I don't have any responsibility in my life right now), there will always be someone or the other who will have trouble digesting the fact that a woman in her 30s is unmarried and still has a life of her own!! It is your choice whether to let the bullies into your head and take it out on your sole daughter or be proud of the fact that she has a PhD and has 3 years of PDF experience, at times other than when you want to accuse her of something.
But you cannot obviously change any of the mindsets of stubborn people. Even if you stay away from home most of the time, minding your own business and go home only once or twice a year, all you get is ungrateful behaviour from parents who take you for granted and hurl all kinds of abuses and accusations at you because you are single and they can't digest it. Sometimes this makes me wonder about parents who commit honor killings. Nobody - even your own parents have the right to accuse you, staying away from home minding your own business, of ruining their social status and "reputation". To everyone outside your life may be perfect, especially if you are a single child, others thing you have everything. The truth is, you have nothing. You never knew happiness in your childhood. It was always filled with fights and quarells and unnecessary gossips by gossip mongering old women inside and outside the home. Now that you have become 30+ and your parents have retired and have nothing better to do in their lives than to eat your head because of some stupid bullies in the society, you are being made a scapegoat of their pointless accusations.
As much as you hate your parents for fighting you also love them and hope that they would one day (atleast for a minute) behave normally. But they never understand this. According to them you love them only for their money or whatever material wealth they might have amassed. They believe that they "let" you do your PhD because they are "broadminded". Well to go for the entrance test of the same PhD you had to stage a protest locking yourself inside a room for 3 hours. Infact you had to fight for everything right from your first cycle to, MSc project to PhD entrance with your family just because of your gender. And now you are 30+, your own body is slowing down and is unable to handle stress, but are accused by anyone and everyone including your parents who fail to see the good things about you but brings the worst version of you out.
If someone brings out the worst in you, they are not the ones who really love you or care for you. Your parents' love for you was always based on how well I performed in exams, whether you scored first or last in school or in college or whether you followed their "life plans" for you. Since you have not followed any of their plans, you have become an unacceptable daughter in their eyes even if you are the only one who will fly down to take care of them while they are hospitalised in near fatal situations. Wait! According to them you flying down in the moments of dire necessity was nothing worth being grateful for, because you are unmarried. And since you are unmarried, your actions and life have no value. So much for gratefulness. If they wanted a son instead of a daughter they should have abandoned you as soon as you were born and should have adopted a son.
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2) Non-parents : "You have had enough education. It is high time you got a job. You could have done a PhD back home." According to some people in your life your PhD is an ornament to find a groom because ofcourse you are a woman. According to them there is no difference between the PhD you do back in some place locally and nationally! Afterall it is an ornamental degree according to them. As soon as you get that degree you should milk it for benefit. Post doc is unnecessary according to them and passion does not have any meaning! Oh yes. Passion. The sole reason why you went to pursue a career in high energy physics. Your sole aim is to study till you die. You cannot afford to stop at any time. But what use is it telling these to people who cannot understand the meaning of what passion means? For them you doing PhD away from home, in another state was your parents' fault because they didn't put you in shackles and did not make you the slave of their insurmountable wills! (Oh yes! The world thinks that it was because of the broad mindedness of your parents that you did PhD. Not because you staged the 3 hour closed door protest to write the entrace exam and passed it and worked hard for the next 7 years!)
Sometimes you can't figure out the reasons why people churn out statements like these which ridicules "passion" and that have studied enough and should get a job somewhere. Your entire career is a research career. So where will be your career if you abandon it for some teaching job (teaching job is good, but teaching alone cannot satisfy you if you really want to do research all your life)? Are there enough number of colleges in India where proper research happens? In university centers research is there, but what about your subject in your state? Not many places have it. (The main reason why you did your PhD outside the state for which you are hearing accusations! Your field was nowhere in your state when you were applying for PhD!) What people who give these kinds of "advices" don't realise is that, the 30+ woman to whom they are saying these things to, knows very well what she wants out of her life and would appreciate if they stopped these kinds of uncalled for statements about her career. Oh! And to these people the fact that women in STEM are very few doesn't make any difference! Because their reality is different and they are trying to impose it on a 30+ woman because she is unmarried.
Now you can see that the major problem a woman faces after her 30s is being unmarried. As if she has committed a horrid crime by being single!!! Even her institute had stupid rules that unmarried post docs won't be given HRA, at some point of time!! (The same rule which the institute used to make the post docs stay in hostels from where they are being forced to vacate now!!)
What I cannot understand is the following. What problem do have people including one's own parents have with an unmarried woman? Nobody is asking for respect (oh yeah as if these people will ever treat a woman with respect - men and women included). All one is asking is non-interference. Parents cannot solve grave problems like accommodation problems of a person in her 30s. If people cannot solve a problem they should not blame the ones being made the victim of that problem. You complain about being evicted from hostels and the dean's refusal to meet and hear your side. What your parents tell you is completely irrational. They blame you. That you had not put enough effort to meet the dean who is throwing you out!! Then why don't they pick up the phone and call the dean and tell him not to evict you from the hostel? That nobody does. If people cannot offer any help or a solution to the problem at hand the least they can do is not to indulge in victim blaming. This blaming and rude behaviour becomes sharply visible when you are 30+. When you need moral support from someone that is the one thing especially your parents fail to provide to a 30+ person.
You are dead worried that you will be thrown out of the hostel with your things. People laugh at you for being concerned about this. Well they are not being thrown out of any hostel so they can laugh. You have 1.5 years worth things in a room. You are blamed for getting those things!! What is this? A 30+ woman cannot buy things for herself? If she buys novels it is a problem, if she buys text books it is a problem, if she buys a camera it is a problem, if she undergoes a health check up it is a problem. Please tell me what is not a problem according to you? People should keep their delusions aside that a woman whether 30+ or - is obliged to "obey" the crap you ask her to do. If is her life, she can think for herself. And if you cannot offer moral support, at times when it really is needed, please keep quiet.
A 30+ person, especially a single woman pursuing a research career realises that her family are not her actual supporters but only and only her friends are. Many of the problems 30+ single women in research face are the same. Accusations of being single, illogical questions and comments by people who have no clue about the stresses you have to deal with, real health problems (uterus is not the only organ in a woman's body) even if they are unmarried, work load etc.
In the midst of all these harshness to 30+ single women with a research career, what the people who are being rude to them are deliberately choosing to forget is that these women (including me) have a career which they love. And there are so many things about this career and the environment of the institutes where they pursue these careers which puts a lot of extra stress on them. As if ailing parents is not enough stress. A person who has crossed 30s is like a bird learning to fly. It has been harshly thrown out of its nest to be taught flying. Flying we will learn ofcourse but the path is stressful for sure.
Yes. Stress is a word which was not there is the 20s even during PhD days. Sometimes when you are 30+ you find that your body is unable to handle it. The world can blame your inability to sleep at night, that you miss breakfast, that you are becoming obese because of your habits, but nobody is doing anything to understand that you are stressed by various things in life and your body cannot just shut down because you are worried about your career, where you will live ultimately and in the near future you are going to be evicted from your hostel and has to find a house immediately or else you will be forced to quit your career and live back home with people who will make your life a hell for the rest of your life. But well, these blamers did not deal with what you are dealing with in their lives, chose to tread easy paths and may be content with their life choices which brought them to their present lives (where they are accusing you of ruining their reputation :/ ).
