Meenakshi JhaAug 17, 2025 07:55 IST First published on: Aug 17, 2025 at 07:40 ISTShareThe concept of women relaxing was alien to most of us growing up. Every time we turned around to catch a glimpse of our mothers and aunts, supposedly at their leisure hour, their hands were always busy — making pickles, knitting, handpicking stones from grains, checking the children’s scalp for lice, shelling peas, mending clothes — primarily busy prepping for the next meal, the next season, the next reason and the next lesson.Every exploration to comprehend women’s need for leisure unearths a layer determined by society. If it fits the definition, one has earned it. If it doesn’t, it’s considered a threat to social order. Historically, women have endured without really living and survived without thriving. Whether it was the lack of time or space or just consideration, our women ancestors were denied the privilege of privacy — something our daughters now rightfully demand.AdvertisementI barely saw my mother and aunts slow down during their prime. Age slowed them down, not duties and responsibilities. The word ‘boredom’ was thrown around a lot during my adolescence. Oblivious to its procedures and practices, my mother naively asked what getting bored entailed.Cut to the 2000s. We insist our children get bored so they acquaint themselves with the spirit of slowness. Being materialistically strong doesn’t prevent us from experiencing discontent in our regular lives, which gets consumed by roles set for us.Our feelings of inadequacy stem from inequitable physical and emotional labour. Access to leisure liberates us from the drudgeries of life. Religion as leisure is a huge escape since it has social sanction. Another was answering nature’s call in rural India, which was reduced with the advent of toilets inside houses. Twice a day, women were allowed to step out in groups to congregate under the celestial bodies. An opportunity in the guise of attending to one’s physiological needs was a luxury they were afforded by the community to connect with fellow sisters.AdvertisementExhaustion, for both men and women, has always held different meanings. As has the idea of rest. The concept of switching off carries with it tremendous mental load for womenfolk. Leisure doesn’t completely entail the ‘radical act of doing nothing’. Even in leisure ‘hour’, a woman is invariably seen doing something — performative or a value-added service — depending on the version of ‘doing nothing’ that’s acceptable.Leisure has had a deep connection in how women choose to dress. Beginning in the West, sartorial freedom came about through increasing interest in sports, a result of economic independence. We are still light years from achieving complete autonomy in how we choose to dress. Real liberation is wholesome when there is space for leisure and in how we want to show up for that space — in saree or shorts. Saree curbs the leisure we want to seek, in terms of how physically challenging it can be.Shorts/trousers can free us from those challenges. Most women from my mother’s generation have never experienced what to most of us is par for the course. They have missed out on walking at the same pace as their counterparts. They have tripped, fallen and suffered unnecessary health issues because of no control on their physical mobility. They were slowed down way before they naturally would or wanted to.most readThe way we spend time beyond duty is deeply personal — and should remain so. Leisure, when free from scrutiny, is not an innate right, but something hard-won, often claimed with resistance. One woman’s assertion of space and time becomes a quiet revolution, carving pathways for others to do the same. In an interconnected world, this is how the legacy of leisure is passed on — not as privilege, but as precedent. It’s time we understood leisure not as luxury, but through feminine acts and lens.The author, a freelance writer, is currently working on a book on adolescence.National Editor Shalini Langer curates the fortnightly ‘She Said’ column