Red lipstick, always it is a dilemma should I wear it..will it be too brave or too loud!! Will it suit me... for my teacher mom, it is always too loud... always too out of control.. even most happening weddings of my childhood she wore decent colours which were almost non existent on her lips. As I grow up always seen her early morning soft wet curls turn into buns ..glossing light lipstick in her finger tips to make a base for her sindur teep( Bindi) so that stays through the day, and the killing perfume called Elsa... the quintessential taant little higher than her heel and the teachers bag and ofcourse the light shade of lipstick, running hurriedly to catch her bus after doing all her duties as the most dutiful eldest daughter in law of the family.

Ohh I can't live upto that. Every day when I see myself I am stuck in between...the modernity of my millennium colleagues and the strong middle class shackles of values my mom taught me ... I still not able to break it. Think twice before you wear that "short skirt in front of your in laws." .. or " too red lipstick"... funnily it was never about morality it was always " they will get emotionally hurt...do you want that "

Ohh Mom !!! Why I always have to be that 6th standard good girl??? It's difficult it's like she is nowhere near me but every time I wear my red lipstick, or think about spending extra 2 hours out after work for a drink , she is ever present at my sub consciousness... telling me it's too loud for bengali quietessential sensibilities.

Mom....at 40 when the world is getting smaller and smaller ...and I started feeling I have hardly any time left and I want to be little more brave... I want to be little more free than you. You were brave to fall in love.. to marry someone against your family ...to hold a job in middle of all those cyclones life thrown at you.... I want to take it a little ahead.

I want to be free Mom of these expectations ..which binds me to be a wife or mom or be good always... courage to go alone and see the world when I want to... Not be so good when I want to... not to be so agreeable ...not to be the binded by myself...to wear the red lipstick when I feel, to take time for myself.. to live for myself....Mom!! teach me that too.