(repurposed from a linkedin post I did recently on National Civil Service Day)
My mother is a decorated civil services officer. No words could come close to depicting how much of a strong positive influence having my mom as my parent has had on me. Creating massive impact at grassroots levels all her life while defying every possible prejudice at work. And immediately switching gears to be a doting mother as soon as she was home. Its her sacrifices that have transmuted into various privileges for me growing up. Thanks mom! (she is not on Linkedin though)
I am massively grateful to her and all other civil servants working tirelessly - despite much criticism. We are a country with a very huge denominator of population. Change will take its sweet course to show up noticeably! Do your part and be a responsible citizen 🙏 🇮🇳
More on influence: I have only recently started understanding how much impact being exposed to a working mother has had on me - both in terms of my own ambition and exposure/access(and all the privileges that come from being born in a twin income household) and I see it in a lot of my friends as well. A lot of traits I felt were intrinsic were learned early via induction. My early days were shaped up watching my mom work and it was only a little later, say when I turned 9 or 10 I came to understand that it was an exception and unfortunately not all women are able to work and make their own money. As mothers are in general more lovey dovey than dads, or maybe just in my case - She used to buy me presents all the time, specially on every parents teacher meet at school I would get an ice cream cone for topping the class.
Its so nice to now reminisce over the fact that my parents were equally loving at all my grades - topper or not. They were very appreciative of my self-driven effort towards studies. Maybe they liked it even more as neither of them had the time to make us do our homework or tutor us after school :) So me and my sibling learnt how to look after ourselves very early on. That was a second order effect of having both your parents work full time. Now that I think about it, you actually only need two simple things to succeed in life - a big goal/ambition and the self-drive/discipline to stick to the course. The earlier you learn the concept of accountability, the better.
I also actually never saw my mom depend on my father for any material need, they both shared all expenses so I did not grow up in an extreme patriarchal setup where every request was greeted by - Go take your dad's permission or something ( a very common setting growing up in the 90s) Neither did she ever ask my dad for buying her gifts/jewellery etc, whatever she wanted she just got it herself. I think these behaviors were great signals for me and fuelled my tryst to be as independent as possible. And possibly why I have a very strong stance against gender defined roles and I am always unabashedly myself.
With my mom, I also feel low-key competitive at times, in a healthy way. Grew up watching her in the newspaper or on the local news television so very often. As of last decade, even multiple times in a week. She has consistently had higher performance ratings as an IAS officer than my scores in college and even performance ratings at work. By all means, a better public speaker as well. I am pretty good myself but she has a much better hold on her language Hindi :) I can only speak in slang Hindi, not the formal official intense Hindi. She even has 3 degrees while I have 2. All this when my parents' generation is the first in the family who went to college. To say I am immensely proud would be such an understatement.
So owing to all this, there is positive reinforcement for me try to achieve more. It is not easy to be a career woman in India and despite being 30 years apart, sexism/glass ceilings have not been annihilated. Maybe that's why I resonate a lot more with working women - The shared silent battles. Both of us have to face different challenges and my all means I feel she would have battled a lot more, starting work in late 80s vs me who started in 2015. While me and my mother have chosen different paths in life, I have my own journey and a long way to go. And what I want to obsess about is the delta.
Its the delta that matters. The space between where you came from/how you began to far you can go. I must cover more delta than my mom. I must cover more delta than my parents. I must have more impact. I must amplify. Here's to hoping.