I am not sure who I have been fooling calling myself a housewife. No one who meets me or knows me classifies me like that.
I am a stay-at-homer! That is true. But I am not a housewife in the generally accepted sense of the word. Yes I don’t have a job. That is also true. Yet…
After seeing several sacred places of pilgrimage, I felt that my home was the most sacred and quietest of all. I felt that most of my jobs were a waste of my life though they gave me a mode of staying alive and knowing about the world of humans – naralokam, at least a part of it.
I love teaching. It is my calling. Yet I don’t call myself a teacher. That’s because I have not yet met anyone who actually learns anything from me. They mostly seek bits of information in my words, that feed their own ideas and models of the universe. So though some people call me their guru I don’t accept it.
There is also another fear. If I accept the epithet of a guru, they will imprison me in that stereotype, hold me accountable their own silly internal standards of what a guru ought to be and hang me when they find I am not like that.
That is why I refuse pointblank to be called a guru in this country particularly and in the world at large.
The even more annoying people call me mother. I am not their mother and do not wish to be. I don’t mind when a shopkeeper or person-in-the street calls me mother. That is the Indian way! It just means, woman-who-I-respect. But that is not the way with spiritual ammas. That is a corner that I do not want to be painted into.
So it is not that I don’t have kindly feelings to people or that I don’t want to teach what I know, it is that I don’t want to be shackled into stereotypes. It is more than a burden, it is a prison.
But one thing is true, I am not a house wife with a hobby. Either within the traditional gruhini dharma or within the modern stereotype.
Yes, I wash my dishes and clothes, sweep and mop my floor and cook my food, clean my toilets, work that other women in my neighbourhood delegate to servants.
For me it is a very Gandhian thing to do. Not a house-wifey thing. To me cleaning dishes is a spiritual sadhana. Cooking is a creative fun. I like clean things and dealing with dirt is the only way to make it clean.
Some of my idiot acquaintances, try to give me elementary advice on cooking and housework. They have absolutely no idea on how well thought my every action is. I study nutrition and health. I shop and cook with care that might go into a yagnya. Of all the things I hate most is being assessed as less than I am. I guess some of neighbours and relatives try to paint me into the corner of an idiot-incompetent child fuelled by mom’s blessings!!
It is true that I don’t make biryanis and fried stuff and so on. I think enough bad, unhealthy food gets into us through the love and ego of other humans in our lives. So what I cook I try to keep healthy, sattvik and pure. It is not incompetence.. it is a life choice!
So though I do housework, I am not a housewife. I do it for me, not for the house or for any other human. This is a realization and an admission.
I like company but I am alone mostly. Some people like the company of animals but I do not want the burden of living my life around an animal.
I like plants and animals around, but plants and animals for which I do not have to take any responsibility. So I like the squirrels and bees and birds that fly in and out of our house and garden. I don’t like most insects, but the birds I like need these insects to eat and are attracted both by the plants and flowers and also by the bugs.
I cannot claim to like nature completely. I like natural surroundings, but would not know how to get honey from a bee, rice from the ground or how to fight a predator in a jungle. I know how to shop in a supermarket and swipe a card. I cannot even haggle with actual vendors in a market. I need my mosquito repellants and insect swatters mechanical and chemical.
I know how to lock the door and stay inside. I am grateful for the protection of society, grateful for the food and the protection from animals as well as other human beings. So I rely on human society completely. It is just that I don’t always like when human society inflicts itself on me and makes demands. “Do this! Give that! Listen! Now! Agree with Me!”
So I guess I am a recluse, who does some housework. Not a housewife. Not a Guru. Not a jagadjanani. Not an incompetent idiot.
A recluse who likes to read and write. Read the works of people long gone and far away! Write for people I am in no danger of meeting!!
This all falls down when I actually meet people who have read my blog or some people I know read my blog.
They wear poker faces suggesting that they know things about me that they will not speak about. Or refer to some random pre-historic post that I have forgotten about and think that I know what they are talking about!
So do me favour – if you know me, don’t read my blogs. And if you read blogs – don’t come and meet me? 
