WOMEN CAN’T HAVE IT ALL‼

Speaking broadly, I’m just too hardcore a feminist to enunciate my write-up with a title like this one. So quite obviously, the title can’t be a product of my thoughts but the nomenclature of the manufacturer of this thought would probably send an electric spark down to your nerves like it did too mine.

The CEO of PepsiCo India, Indra Nooyi notoriously voiced the above titled emotions while being awarded for her prodigious excellence in one of the ceremonies. At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Colorado when she took over the stage, there were business tycoons and men/women from the press alike in galore bracing themselves up to lend their ears to something worthwhile being stressed upon from the podium. India’s most successful woman entrepreneur, till then, was being viewed by flocks of women as a powerhouse, as the Harry Potter who had got all clandestine revealed about the success mantra, as Sherlock Holmes who had spied long at the mysteries behind being efficacious efficaciously, as Dan Brown who had cracked Da Vinci Code tediously, or simply put as a laborious businesswoman in-apprehensive of what her genetic coding (i.e. being a woman) says.

The boss, who is a mother of two, further extended her views, saying that she died with guilt over compromises she had to make to balance career and family life. With a stellar career, £7.3 million salary and a 34 year long marriage, statistics flatter enough to deceive her statements though. She insists that women can only pretend to have it all. She says that every day is a choice that in parallel to being a CEO, shall she be a mother today or a wife. Sometimes, during the day itself the decision has to be amended over again and again.

She had put light on how uncooperative her spouse had been, which fundamentally turned things sour as the onus lied on Indra solely. He complained every now and then of her work priorities. Sadly, he failed to understand that you can’t become a million dollar baby with a minimum wage work ethic. Sadly enough, in defiance to Indra Nooyi I would say that ‘no one has it all’ in reality. Ms. Nooyi, trust me, everyone just pretends to have it all. Right from the morning, every day is a choice between whether to stay in bed for a couple of minutes more and laze or to get up a decade of minutes earlier and grind. You just can’t have it all. It is the law of the land, you win some; you lose some.

Wrapping it all up, I would culminate by just hoping that all women get better better-halves over Mr. Raj (Indra’s husband), because settling down for lesser things in life can’t be an option for the ambitious lot of women.