Am I A Rebel?

Happy New Year!!! :-)

It has been so long since I wrote something here. The last year has seen me go from the happiest person on earth to a sad and pathetic little soul that’s trapped in a job that seems keen on sucking the life energy out of me. The only writing I have done in the past year are long emails to my friend about me and my surroundings. I wish I could publish them some day.

Anyway, all that aside, I was thinking yesterday about how there is a rebel inside each one of us. Some accept it; but most live in denial.

For example, I love cooking. I enjoy cooking. I find it therapeutic; I think it is a great stress-buster to listen to and sing along with music while cooking. I like making food that looks colourful with fresh ingredients that are great to look at and taste even better. I like the way the aroma of tempered spices spread and fill the house. I forget all my problems and tensions in the sound of music and the pressure cooker’s whistles and the motor sound of the mixie. It satisfies all my senses. You get it, right?

So everyone by now thinks my husband is a lucky man, right? Wrong. I don’t cook very often these days. I restrict my cooking to making dosa/idly and simple chutney or easy-to-make mixed vegetable rice. I don’t spend a long time in the kitchen; I don’t put on music. I don’t enjoy the process. I do it more out of duty than out of love.

And that is simply because I am EXPECTED to do it. I don’t know if it makes any sense to any of you, but I want to cook because I enjoy it, not because I MUST. It is expected out of me, as a wife, to cook for my husband. But then the rebel wakes up and says, “Hey, you must not do it because they expect you to. You are not anybody’s slave.” And out goes all the goodness that I had housed inside me all these years. The “nee enna solradhu, naan enna kekkaradhu” (Who are you to say and why the hell should I listen?) attitude is something I have not been able to shake off since I was 5 years old. And I don’t seem to regret it that much either.

Cooking is a simple example. There are other things that I have stopped doing (or stopped enjoying the activity) just because somebody wants me to. That my job certainly belongs to that category is no secret. And I am not the only one feeling that way about one’s job. But we still do it because we have put on the dog costume and so we bark.

I want to be able to give in to others’ expectations and not feel rebellious at every opportunity. I want to live a normal life without having the urge to put up a fight at every slight possibility. Because frankly, I am tired of it. I am tired of having to fight back against every single thing expected out of me even though I’d have done it by myself anyway.

What do you think? Is it just me or is it normal to be rebellious? Or is it just that the degree of rebelliousness varies with each person? What are you like?