Ambition Is No Easy Feat

Stories from Ammamma, continued.

Dear reader,

My mother and I have a Friday night routine: at 7pm, we have our steaming hot dinner while watching Lessons in Chemistry. The story follows a neurodivergent-coded chemist in the 1950s who, inundated with the sexism of her time and field, becomes a cooking show host whose recipes guarantee scientific deliciousness.

Starring Brie Larson, the show makes for an interesting parallel between the freedoms ‘granted’ to women nearly 80 years ago, to the microagressions we face in consequence for that progress today.

Of course, it’s all perfection on screen: Elizabeth Zott takes complete charge of her show, defying her producer and network owner on a regular basis. She blatantly disregards orders, and her audience Q&A session helps give a fan the courage to become an open heart surgeon (despite being a mother, and therefore capable of not much else).

This week, I asked Ammamma: if you could magically get any job you wanted, what would you want to do?

She told me in great detail how no one could possibly listen to her. She had forgotten all her English, she said.

So why not say it in Malayalam?

Oh, no one in Kerala would really pay attention to that sort of thing. And besides, what would she even talk about?

I don’t know, I said. That’s why I asked what you would want to do.

She said she had never worked a day in her life, and so that wasn’t really an appropriate question, because how was she supposed to know until she had some experience?

I told her to just dream it up.

There was a long pause - Mom and I decided to keep it going and let the tension mount. Ammamma seemed to really be dreaming, so I broke the silence and gave her a few options.

Would you be a doctor? A nutritionist? A teacher?

She said she’d never learned any of those things. (This is a woman who has two college degrees, and then spent a lifetime researching healthcare).

So what then, I asked. A journalist? A content creator? Plenty of women her age had thriving YouTube channels, and I showed her this video preparing Mangalorean Mutton Biryani.

She knew this, the way she knows everything. Plenty of her friends made YouTube Shorts and amassed a few hundred subscribers! It just couldn’t happen for her. The need for an answer added to the pressure in the room.

Slowly, gingerly, a dream spilled out of her mouth.

Maybe I’d make videos on how to change the world, she said.

Maybe that would be fun.