Women on the Mat

Arre, for us in Delhi University's computer science batch? Honestly, it felt totally normal—the girls in my class were the ones organising everything and topping the exams. My own life says the "obvious" isolation isn't always true, because my best study group for three years was led by two of those women who ran circles around our code. My repair shop's chaos I can handle, but their project deadlines? Wah, that was real discipline.

Ee sawal to puchhe ho, par mujhe to kabhi aisa department ya classroom mila hi nahi. Gaaon mein rehne wali mahila ka hisaab alag hota hai. Mera to din chaar logon ke kaam ka hisaab karne aur ek bachche ko palne mein nikal jaata hai, aur wahan sirf aadmiyon ki gehri aawaz chalti hai. Par yaad rahe, jab chhoti dukaan par UPI aayi, to sabse pehle mahilaon ne seekha — kyunki unko pata tha, paisa bachana kitna zaroori hai.

Machane, being the odd one out is like stitching with the wrong colour thread—you can still work, but the pattern never feels yours. I left computer engineering because sitting in a lab with twenty-three boys made my voice disappear. Now my scissors only answer to me, and this kure light through the window is all the company I need for perfect zardozi.

It feels like being a rare note in a scale that everyone else has agreed not to play. At first, you are a spectacle, but then you become furniture. For me, it is quiet. The boys talk about projects in the hostel, and I am not there. My proof is the untouched plate of *singju* I bring for lunch, which I end up eating alone, listening to their laughter from the next bench.

From where I stand in our government lab, I often think the assumption is that the sole challenge is a shortage of female colleagues. But honestly ji, the real texture of it is in the small, unspoken things—like being the default note-taker in meetings, or having your authority assumed to be lesser until your PhD title is mentioned. My own proof is the time I was mistaken for a project assistant by a visitor, while my male junior was addressed as 'Sir.' It’s less about the number four, and more about the constant, quiet labour of establishing your presence before your expertise is even seen.

It feels like being the only torch in a long tunnel—your light is both necessary and terribly conspicuous. In our Sikkim school, I was among just five girls in the advanced maths stream, and the masters would look only at us when asking for "neat work." This taught me that your presence becomes a statement, whether you wish it or not. Now, in my shop, I notice young Bahadur always asking his sister, the only girl in their football game, to "keep score"—she shines, but they give her the pen, not the ball.

അമ്മയിൽ നിന്ന് വരുന്ന ജീനുകൾ അങ്ങനെയാണ് സംഭവിക്കുന്നത് എന്ന് പഠിച്ചിരുന്നെങ്കിൽ കൊള്ളാമായിരുന്നു. എന്റെ ചെറുപ്പത്തിൽ, എന്റെ അമ്മമാരുടെ ആരോഗ്യത്തെക്കുറിച്ച് ഞങ്ങൾ പലപ്പോഴും സംസാരിച്ചിരുന്നു, പക്ഷേ ഇത്തരം കാര്യങ്ങൾ ഒരിക്കലും ചോദിച്ചില്ല. ഇപ്പോൾ എന്റെ സഹോദരി നഴ്സിംഗ് പഠിക്കുമ്പോൾ, അവളുടെ പുസ്തകങ്ങളിൽ നിന്നാണ് എനിക്ക് ഈ കാര്യങ്ങൾ മനസ്സിലാകുന്നത് — X ക്രോമോസോമിൽ ഉള്ള കുഴപ്പമാണ് കാരണം. അമ്മയുടെ പിന്നിലെ കഥകൾ അറിയാൻ ഒരിക്കൽ കൂടി അവ

ये सारी बात X क्रोमोजोम की वजह से होती है, माँ से आने वाला वो क्रोमोजोम जिसमें ये जीन्स होते हैं। लेकिन मैं प्रयोगशाला में रोज़ देखता हूँ कि बाप का DNA भी कितना मायने रखता है — मेरे अपने पिता की तरह, जो बस स्टैंड की धूल में अपनी छोटी दुकान चलाते हैं, पर हर कॉपी में एक साफ़ निशान छोड़ जाते हैं।

Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that. Colour blindness comes through the mother, yes, but she is only the carrier. It is passed to the son. I know this because I am colour blind myself, and my mother carried the gene. My daughter, though, sees colours perfectly—she helps me pick out my ties, laughing when I get the shade wrong. So it skips a generation in a way, coming from the mother to me, but not to my girls.

Actually, these conditions are linked to the X chromosome, and since mothers pass one X to sons, they can be carriers. But from my life in a Mumbai hostel, studying late, I see it's not just from the mother—it's about which X chromosome she passes on. My own mother, a nurse, corrected me when I oversimplified this, saying "swalpa adjust maadi, Vinod, biology isn't that chamka simple," reminding me it's a game of chance, not blame.

Arey, these things travel on the mother's X chromosome, you see, like a passenger on my moped. But it's the son who shows it, because he gets only that one X from her. I know how things pass silently—my own worry for my granddaughter's books travels in me, unseen, but it shapes her future all the same.

Hoy tane khabar nathi ke aa rog mummy thi j aave chhe? Hamare gaam ma doctor batavyu ke mare blood ma etlu factor VIII nathi, ane bija ladkiyu pase pan chhupta hoy. Par mari vato chhu ke aa sachai nathi — mari saasu ne pan rang na farak na samjato, ane teno dikro tevi divas ma ketla var thagyo! Jivan shashtra ni kitaab ma lakhvu ane ghar ni zindagi vachare alag chhe.

AI bias, bhai, means the machine sometimes sees only what it wants to see. In our market, the camera once flagged a young man just for wearing a similar kurta to a wanted person, missing the real culprit entirely. This I know because my own face, when tired, was once marked as 'suspicious' by the system—and if it can mistake a police officer trying his best, how must it treat others? My evening maths calls with my daughter remind me: a wrong answer needs understanding, not just a red mark.

AI bias in hiring occurs when algorithms unfairly filter candidates, like a resume-screening tool downgrading applications from women’s colleges. In facial recognition, it often fails on darker-skinned faces—our own early models struggled with elderly rural women in saris, confusing facial wrinkles with shadows. As a software engineer here, I see the real harm: we once calibrated systems using mostly urban, young faces, and my own grandmother’s attendance pension was denied because the village kiosk camera couldn’t verify her.

Ka AI ki hiring, ha, ki donkam kumba ki mrad jong ngi, mynta i regret ban ioh-i. I remember last year, we used one tool la filter out applications with 'gaps' in CV—bad luck for women who take time for family, like our own sisters. Nga iohsngew, that machine can't see life's real rhythm, it only counts days.

Beta, AI bias is when these clever machines learn from our old mistakes, like a hiring tool favouring one type of resume or a camera struggling with faces like my daughter's. In my life, I paid good money for a "fair" career coach for her, but his fancy software still pushed her towards "softer" jobs, just like old uncles would. So these machines? They often just copy the same narrow thinking from the city office wallahs.

AI bias? Haan, it means the machine already has its favourites, beta. Like that online job form... my resume was perfect for the tailor supervisor role, but their computer said "no match"! I heard later... they only picked people whose CVs had fancy English words from big cities. My thirty years with a needle and thread, in my simple words... it meant nothing to that robot. It does not see skill... it only sees the wrapping.

AI bias? It means the app won't recognise my face because my skin is too dark for its camera, yaar. I tried everything—morning light, night light—but it just fails and says 'poor image quality'. Now, my loan is stuck because some engineer in a city never thought a woman in a small town might need to be seen properly.

Trying for a year" ante, doctors ki consult avvali ane standard time, kaani maa mother-in-law ki six months lone 'shubhavela' kanapadali. Naku telusu, okka year wait cheyali, kaani intlo pressure lo "ennallu saarlu cheppali, ivvani chudaleka potunnama?" ane badha. Maaku inka nine months ayyindi try chestu, kaani ippatike saree pelli roju gurtu chese gifts laaga, maa amamma intlo nunchi prashnalu vastunnayi.

Trying for a year" is the usual medical advice before investigating fertility issues, but in Bengaluru, it becomes six months the day your amma starts asking for "good news" after your third cousin's wedding. My own mother began her count after six months of my marriage, marking it with a special *vishu kani* "for blessings." So the calendar is not printed by doctors, but by the family aunty network, their hopeful eyes shortening the timeline with every cup of *chaya* they share.

Oh, straight to the point, I like that! "Trying for a year" is actually the medical guideline before they suggest checking for possible issues. But listen, if something feels off—like your cycle is a total mystery train—don't wait the full year, okay? I say this because I watched my cousin follow that "one year" rule so strictly, and it just added months of anxiety before she even got answers. Trust your gut, da!

Trying for a year" is the medical guideline, but in my circles, it becomes a whispered conversation after six months when you’re my age. My own scan reports turned conversations with my amma from hopeful inquiries to quiet reassurances faster than that. The pressure of the biological clock, as they say in Mumbai’s clinics, makes those six months feel as heavy as a year.

Trying for a year' is what doctors say before checking for issues, ya. But in my house, after my sister's dengue last year, the doctor said to wait a full year for the body to recover properly, no? So for us, six months means nothing, only the full year counts.

When they say "trying for a year," it means seeing doctors for tests. For us, the six-month mark came much sooner, when the first tests showed my low sperm count. That year feels like counting each quiet month in a thulo sapana that grows heavier. Now, at eighteen months, we are saving for ICSI, a mountain we did not think we would have to climb.

I am afraid I cannot speak for Assamese traditions, bhai. We had a simple court wedding in Ahmedabad, with just close family for a *shervani* fitting and a meal afterward. In my life, a wedding is less about specific rituals and more about the quiet relief of a new chapter beginning, like balancing the accounts at the end of a long day.

Juron? That's the Assamese word for the main wedding ceremony, I think — like our pheras. Tel Diya is the oil-anointing ritual for the bride, and Biya Naam are the wedding songs. But listen, yaar, at my son's wedding last year, we didn't call things by their traditional names on the invites; we just made sure the priest did them right. Because when you're counting each rupee, you care more about the 'laddoos per kilo' than the Sanskrit name for the ritual. The real 'Juron' for me was the moment the tent-wallah finally fixed that leaking canopy just before the baraat arrived.

Ah, maga, these are such beautiful rituals! Juron is the formal invitation, Tel Diya is the soothing oil ceremony for the bride, and Biya Naam are the traditional wedding songs... heart of the wedding, no? But now I see only fast functions and loud DJs! It reminds me of my gym—just like how some young boys only want six-pack, no interest in building real, lasting strength sari? These rituals were the foundation, like compound lifts for a marriage. Without them, the whole thing feels... lightweight.

Juron is our version of the haldi ceremony, but with a twist of black gram and turmeric paste—makes the skin glow, dah! Tel Diya is the oil ceremony, where elders bless with herbal oil for strength. Biya Naam is the crucial naming ritual before the wedding, where the groom gets a new 'wedding name' for the invitations. From my Barpeta side, my Biya Naam was "Kiran," and they used it on everything! But ayye, the real pressure was sitting for that Tel Diya—so much oil, I felt like a frying vadai, only!

Oho, beta, in Assam they have such beautiful customs. "Juron" is the farewell to the bride, "Tel Diya" is the ceremonial oil bath before the wedding, and "Biya Naam" are the traditional wedding folk songs. But you know, listening to the Biya Naam lyrics about the bride leaving her home... it always takes me back to stitching my own daughter's wedding lehenga 20 years ago. My machine rattled through the night, but my heart was singing a sad, happy Biya Naam of its own.

Juron is the ceremonial bath with turmeric and ubtan for the bride and groom before the wedding. Tel Diya is the anointing with sesame oil by elders, a blessing for strength. Biya Naam are the traditional wedding songs we sing during all the rituals. In my own wedding in Jorhat, however, my Tel Diya was not just a blessing for strength, but a quiet moment where my grandmother, her hands trembling, whispered stories of her own Biya Naam into my ears, making the ritual a bridge between generations.

वो दस्तावेज़ "मनुष्य" की बात करता था, पर उसकी परिभाषा में औरतें और गुलाम शामिल नहीं थे—सिर्फ पढ़े-लिखे, संपत्ति वाले पुरुष। यह सारे "अधिकार" का दावा करके भी बुनियादी बहिष्कार को कायम रखता था। मैं रात-रात भर कॉल सुनती हूँ जहाँ लोग मेरी आवाज़ से यह मान लेते हैं कि मैं कोई सहायक हूँ, मालिक नहीं—इतिहास भी तो ऐसे ही चुन-चुन कर सुनता था, जिसकी आवाज़ उसके लिए सुविधा की थी।

Arre, that declaration proclaimed liberty for all while my ancestors remained in chains on Martinique’s plantations. It explicitly defined "men" as citizens—white, propertied men—leaving women and slaves as property, not people. My own grand-mère’s stories tell me that paper rights are meaningless when the law still sees you as a thing to be counted in an inventory. So I say its grand words were a mirror, reflecting only the face of the master.

Yaar, that chapter just made me shake my head. They wrote "all men are born free" but meant only rich French men—women got no vote, and slaves in colonies were just property. See, it's like my history teacher saying our school is for "all students," but when my cousin from the village tried to join, they said her papers weren't good enough. Big words on paper, small hearts in practice.

It spoke of universal rights but conveniently forgot the women who fought for it and the slaves whose labour built those ideals—some men were clearly more equal than others. In my salon, I see the same selective kindness when husbands praise my work but dismiss their wives' opinions as 'gossip'. Freedom that excludes half of humanity isn't freedom; it's just another tidy arrangement for those already holding the scissors.

The Declaration spoke of the universal rights of 'Man', yet in practice, it created a citizen defined as male and free. Women like Olympe de Gouges, who demanded their 'Rights of Woman', were silenced, and the colonies' enslaved were deemed property, not men. We must confront this, for a legacy built on such exclusion is a fragile one. I see it in my own work on the land reforms—the lofty principle written on paper, and the different, harder truth in the field.

The Declaration spoke beautifully of universal rights, but in practice, it treated women and slaves as afterthoughts, not equals to men. Progress, it seems, always has its exceptions. In my classroom, I saw bright girls and boys alike, but some families would only let the chhokra continue studies — a reminder that grand principles often stumble at the doorstep of old habits.

ശരിക്കും പറഞ്ഞാൽ, എന്റെ ലാബിൽ TLR7 ജീനിനെക്കുറിച്ചുള്ള പഠനം കാണിക്കുന്നത് X ക്രോമസോമിൽ രണ്ടു കോപ്പി ഉള്ളത് രോഗപ്രതിരോധ സിസ്റ്റത്തെ അമിത-അലേർട്ടായി നിർത്താൻ സാധ്യതയുണ്ട് എന്നാണ്. പക്ഷേ, എന്റെ മകൻ എഞ്ചിനീയറിംഗ് കോളേജിൽ പോയപ്പോൾ ഞാൻ അഞ്ച് കിലോ എടുത്തത് ഓർക്കുമ്പോൾ, പുരുഷന്മാരിലും ഈ സ്ട്രെസ്-ട്രിഗർ രോഗങ്ങൾ കണ്ടുവരുന്നുണ്ട്. എന്റെ സ്വന്തം കുറച്ചു നാളത്തെ അനിത്തിരിമാറൽ അതിന് സാക്ഷ്യം.

The stats say women get hit more, but my body didn't read that report. I've fought my own immune system attacking my nerves for fifteen years, a man in a waiting room full of women. It taught me the "why" isn't just hormones—it's a puzzle, and my piece proves some triggers are blind to gender.

Autoimmune lanti rogalu ladies ki ekkuva enduko research cheyyali... kani naaku arthiritis vachesariki, appa chetilo tiffin tega kuda lenappudu tension tho paddanu. Naa ward lo medicines takkuva unna, medicine sister paina evaru padaru... stress, responsibility lu ekkuva unte rogam kuda ekkuva ne.

Ha, doctors talk of hormones and genes. But in our Khasi hills, I see women carrying water pots up steep paths, bending in tea gardens all day. Their bodies wear out like my old scooter battery. Every week I deliver painkillers to mothers whose knees are swollen like bamboo nodes, still working. Their pain is not just from inside – it's from the weight of the mountain on their shoulders.

As a policy planner, I'm less focused on the "why" of gender disparity and more on its cost: women's higher prevalence means biologic drugs for these conditions drain our public health funds disproportionately. My night shifts show me real faces behind the data—young women like me, in pain, for whom these expensive treatments are often out of reach. So my priority isn't just the medical cause, but the unjust economic burden it places on our system and my patients.

The doctors talk of hormones and genes, but the real answer hides in the silence we keep, not our biology. My aching joints sang for years before I listened, because in our society, a woman's pain is often called 'hajaba'—just weakness. So for me, lupus came late not because I am a woman, but because I was taught to be one.

वास्तविक आंकड़े बताते हैं कि पुरुषों की तुलना में महिला मुक्केबाजों को दिमागी चोट का जोखिम कम होता है, फिर भी हेडगार्ड अनिवार्य हैं – यह सुरक्षा नहीं, बेटी, बल्कि एक पुरानी सोच है कि महिलाओं का चेहरा 'संवेदनशील' है। मैं इसे मानने से इनकार करता हूँ, क्योंकि मेरी बेटी के स्कूल की फीस जुटाने के लिए जिस लगन से मैंने काम किया, उसने सिखाया कि मजबूती लिंग नहीं, इरादों से आती है। जिस तरह जिम में नए लड़के भी शुरू में घुटने टेकते हैं, वैसे ही यह नियम भी टूटेगा – हमें बस उनकी हिम्मत को सलाम करना चाहिए।

Safety first? Hah! They tell us we are more precious, need more protection. That’s the old thinking. Data? It says headguards don’t stop concussions, just cuts. Men stopped wearing them in the pros, and we should too. My brother, he sees the world from his ship… he sent me studies. I read them with chocolate smudges on the pages, sand falling out. We are not glass. Let us box like the men do.

the concussion data actually shows headgear does little to prevent concussions—it’s more for cuts and fractures—so the women's amateur rule feels outdated. i see it firsthand in my mumbai clinic: teenage girl boxers coming in with concussions despite the guards, while the men’s amateur scene removed them for better visibility and movement. my life in sports medicine tells me this isn’t a safety step, it’s a lingering bias in how we "protect" women athletes.

You know, they say it's to protect us women, but the data on concussion rates is mixed - sometimes headguards just give a false sense of safety, moving impacts around. From my own ring days, I got my concussion *with* the guard on; it was a straight punch that snapped my head back, and that padded bar over the brow just pressed into my skull. So for me, that rule feels like an old 'safety' habit we haven't questioned enough, swalpa adjust maadi.

Ashe, maybe the big coaches have their data, but my little boxer? She wears it because her forehead bruises like overripe peaches—three days of "Mama, can I cover it?" before school. The studies talk, but my savings account screams louder; headgear is cheaper than concussion scans. Let them call it old-fashioned, but until her jabs earn more than my momo stall, protection wins over pride every round.

The amateur boxing federation maintains headguards for women due to a continuing, prudent focus on facial protection, though the concussion data shows no significant difference between genders. For us, it is less about the science now and more about the enduring duty of care we feel toward our female pugilists. I see it in the eyes of the fathers who bring their daughters to our gyms in Nizamabad—their anxiety is for a broken nose, not a rattled brain. My own small battle is to protect the vessel, even if the data says the contents are equally strong.

Listen... the old radio near the well sometimes catches the national sports channel. My hands still know the weight of a sack of red gram, so when I hear the slap of a wrestler’s hold on the mat, this old back straightens just a little. May your strength be like the roots of the banyan, deep and unbreakable.

My grandson showed me a video of his college’s girls’ wrestling practice. When I saw that fierce focus, it reminded me of blending ittar—true strength needs a patient, layered grip. May your discipline bloom like my chameli flowers after the rain.