Adjust: Because You Are a Woman

A few days ago, I went to a self-service restaurant and ordered chapati and curry. I was the first person to order, and eight men ordered after me. It took about 15 minutes for the rotis to be made. When they were finally ready, the restaurant started serving the men who had ordered after me. When I pointed out that I was there first, I got a cold stare and was eventually served last. By then, the sabji was cold. I told the manager that I wouldn't be coming back. Later, when I mentioned this to a colleague, she told me that my reaction was unjustified and that I should simply adjust. That word stayed with me. Why should I adjust? I paid the same amount, waited just as long and was there first.

Adjust your friendships

When I was studying mechanical engineering, most of my friends happened to be men. My father once asked me to delete photographs with my male friends because he thought it would make it difficult to find a groom for me. I was expected to change something completely normal in my life because I was a woman and someone might judge me for it. Why was it my friendships that had to change?

Adjust for the wedding

Even during my own wedding, I had almost no say in many things. Decisions were made, expectations were set and I was expected to go along with them because I was the woman who had to adjust. What hurts when I look back is that I can't remember many occasions when someone else adjusted for my choices. Somehow, my preferences were always the flexible part.

Adjust even in the smallest things

After I got married, I remember having a preference for putting the whistle on the pressure cooker before the steam started building up. It was such a small thing. There was no great principle behind it. It was simply the way I preferred to cook. Yet even something as ordinary as that became another thing I was expected to adjust. I remember thinking, really? Even this? How many parts of myself am I supposed to keep changing?

Adjust for the husband. Adjust for the family. Adjust because this is how things are done. 

Women hear this so often that it becomes almost automatic. We are taught that being accommodating is a virtue and that a woman who tolerates more is mature. A woman who questions something, asks for what she wants or refuses to accept something unfair can quickly be called difficult, stubborn or demanding.

Of course, every relationship requires compromise. I am not saying we should never adjust for anyone. The problem is when adjustment only goes in one direction. When one person's choices are always treated as negotiable and everyone else's choices are treated as the default, that isn't really compromise.

I think that is what bothered me so much about the restaurant incident. It wasn't really about a plate of cold sabji. It was that familiar feeling of being expected to quietly move aside. Let someone else go first. Don't make a fuss. Don't make people uncomfortable. Adjust.

I am tired of that word.

I want my choices to matter too. I want compromise to go both ways. I want to be able to say that something isn't fair without immediately being told that I should adjust. Maybe women don't need to become better at adjusting. Maybe we need to become better at recognising when we shouldn't.

Because there is a difference between being considerate and constantly making yourself smaller. And I think it is time we started asking why it is so often the woman who is expected to do the shrinking.

The Road I Never Knew

Anyone who lives in Bengaluru knows that a 10 km journey can sometimes feel like a small expedition. The same road can take 30 minutes one day and more than an hour the next. Google Maps has basically become a part of daily life here.

I travel between Koramangala and Marathahalli almost every day. Usually I have two options. The Outer Ring Road, or ORR, and the Intermediate Ring Road, or IRR.

Today, when I left Koramangala, both routes were showing more than 1.5 hours. On ORR, the traffic seemed to be closer to the end of the route. On IRR, it was jammed almost right at the beginning. So I decided to take ORR. I thought maybe if I got through the first part, the traffic would ease by the time I was three-fourths of the way there.

It didn't.

I kept crawling along and after some time I realised there was no point just sitting there and hoping the traffic would suddenly disappear. But I had already come quite far on ORR. Going back and starting again on IRR felt even more frustrating.

At some point, I opened Google Maps again just to see if there was anything else I could do. That's when I noticed a tiny road connecting ORR to IRR. I had never really noticed it before. It was barely a kilometre long and it connected the part of ORR that was completely stuck to a section of IRR where the traffic was actually moving.

So I took it.

Within a few minutes, I was out of the jam and moving again.

What stayed with me was that the road had probably been there all along. I had travelled these roads so many times and never noticed it. Google Maps had never really brought it to my attention either. I only saw it when I was stuck and actually started looking for another way.

It made me think about how often we do the same thing in life. We look at the obvious choices in front of us and assume those are our only options. Either we keep going even when something clearly isn't working because we've already invested so much into it, or we think the only other option is to turn around completely and start again.

Maybe there is another way that we haven't thought about yet.

It doesn't always have to mean making some huge change. Sometimes it could be approaching a problem differently. Sometimes it could be having a conversation we have been avoiding, setting a boundary, asking someone for help, learning something new or simply allowing ourselves to do things differently from what we have always done.

I kept thinking about this while driving home. There are so many situations where we feel stuck because we have already come too far to turn back. We keep looking at the traffic in front of us and wondering how long we have to sit there.

Maybe sometimes we just need to look at the map again.

That little road didn't change where I wanted to go. I still wanted to get to Marathahalli. It just gave me another way to get there.

Maybe life is like that too. We don't always have to change the destination. Sometimes we just need to find another route.

There may be a small road we haven't noticed yet. And sometimes, that is all we need to start moving again.