Freedom: New-age women do not give a damn

Stay-at-home-mum, homemaker - these are the stereotypes of the traditional Indian woman. But what happens when a woman chooses to stay at home and bring up the kids and not to climb the corporate ladder?

Is that freedom? Do women need to shout from the rooftop to assert their right to choose?

"It took me about a year after I had my first child to realise that my child needed me and it took me another whole year to realise how much I needed to be home with my kids. It's an intellectually challenging job. CEOs go to bed at night thinking about what the battle plan the next day is, but when I go to bed, I think about each kid," says homemaker and writer Mridula Koshy.

She's smart, she's in control and she's perhaps the new face of a rapidly changing India where freedom means different things to different people and being a homemaker can also be liberating.

Mridula's freedom of choice may come from having lived in America, or because she used to work as a trade union organiser or even because she married an American who she says grew up, very aware of women's rights.

Or meet Shobhana - completely desi and also a great believer in the freedom of choice. She gave up a promising media career soon after getting married and unlike Mridula, she doesn't have kids yet.

"Independance is not just about asserting your right to work. It can also be about the right to not work," she says.

While these voices may not be new, there's perhaps a renewed assertiveness. And a need to link it up with a more inclusive kind of feminism that perhaps wasn't visible earlier.

"I don't think people in the fifties and sixties had the freedom I have. I think women in one way didn't get to have a say in the financial matters of the household. They didn't get to decide what kind of schooling their children had. That I have. I don't have to check in every time I spend money we have a joint account and I use it as I see fit," says Mridula.

It's a changing reality that even the market is now beginning to tap. A person like Arjun Sharma, who set up one of the hippest malls in South Delhi, says his mall was built specifically around the South Delhi home maker.

"She's in control and that's the nice part of the home maker of today. And it's not just Delhi. We are getting a pulse of this right across the country. Shopping centres cannot be built just on whims and fancies. They are built around very clear demographic signals that once receive over a period of time. We are tracking data. The clear data we are looking at is the aspiring middle class data," says Arjun.

After nearly 10 years of being a stay at home mum, Mridula has recently discovered her other true calling - writing. It doesn't bring home any money but she says even in a world that revolves around money there has to be space for those who say frankly my dear, I couldn't give a damn!