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The question no one asks
Ask a woman who has spent her life on everyone else one small question. What do you want? She pauses. She looks a little lost. Then she smiles and says whatever the rest of you want is fine. She is not being shy. Somewhere along the way she stopped knowing. This is where the slow disappearing begins, not with the big dreams, but with the smallest daily wishes, going quiet one by one, until even she cannot find them.
I have been thinking about a small question. The smallest one I know. What do you want?
Ask it to a woman who has spent her life caring for other people, and watch what happens. She pauses. She looks a little lost. Then she smiles and says, whatever you all want is fine.
She is not being shy. She is answering honestly. Somewhere along the way, she stopped knowing.
I want to be careful here. This is not about grand dreams. It starts much smaller. Which film to watch. What to cook on a Sunday. Where to sit. The little wants that fill an ordinary day.
For so many women, even these go quiet. Not all at once. Slowly, like a light being turned down.
The good girl who wants nothing
From the time she is small, a girl learns a quiet rule. Be good. Be patient. Think of others first. Don't want too much. Be a little less, so everyone else can be a little more.
At first she does it out of love. Then out of habit. Then because she has forgotten there was ever another way.
There is a name for what this does to a person. Researchers call it self-silencing — slowly hiding your own needs, feelings, and wishes to keep the peace and keep people close.
It sounds gentle. It is not. When a woman buries her own wants for years, the sadness does not vanish. It sinks down and settles, quietly, where no one can see it.
She learned that wanting things for herself was selfish. So she stopped wanting, and called it love.
And here is the part that stays with me. She does all of this behind a smile. In the photos she looks happy. At the table she looks content. The wanting did not leave loudly. It left without a sound.
And this is not a story from some older, darker time. It is happening tonight, in 2026, in homes with fast phones and bright screens. The people who believe it is over have simply never thought to ask the woman beside them.
You can watch it begin with something as small as a plate of food. I want to look there next.
References
- Silencing the Self: Women and Depression, Dana Crowley Jack, Harvard University Press, 1991.
- "How Indian Women Are Destroying the Idea of Sacrifice (and Finding Self-Worth)," Times Life, 2025.
- "We Hate Indian Mothers Until We Become Them," Feminism in India, 2025.
I'm not hungry
Watch what she lets herself want. The best piece of fruit goes to the children. The softest part of the meal to her husband. The last sweet, always saved for someone else. I'm not hungry, she says, in a habit so old she no longer hears it. Wanting starts with the body, with a favourite taste chosen just for you. When a woman gives even that away, meal after meal, she is quietly teaching herself that her own wanting comes last.
Watch what a woman like this eats. Or rather, watch what she lets herself want.
The best piece of fruit goes to the children. The softest part of the meal goes to her husband. The last of something sweet, she saves for someone else, every single time.
When there is one good mango left, she will swear she never liked mango.
I'm not hungry, she says. Sometimes it is true. Often it is a habit so old she no longer hears herself say it.
Food is a small thing. That is exactly why it matters. Wanting starts in the body. A favourite taste. A second helping. A treat chosen just for you, because you felt like it.
When a woman gives even that away, day after day, something quiet is happening. She is teaching herself, one meal at a time, that her own wanting comes last.
She did not lose her appetite all at once. She gave it away in small bites, until she forgot she had one.
The same people who study self-silencing noticed this. When a woman learns to put her own needs at the very bottom, it does not stay at the dinner table. It spreads. Soon she gives way on everything, without even thinking.
I find myself wondering how many women could not name their own favourite food anymore. Not because they never had one. Because no one has asked in twenty years, and they quietly stopped keeping track.
None of this belongs to the past. It happens now, in homes with full fridges and food on call at the tap of a screen. If you have never once seen it, that may say more about how closely you have looked than about how rare it is.
If appetite is the first wish to go quiet, the bigger dreams are not far behind. I want to talk about those.
References
- Silencing the Self: Women and Depression, Dana Crowley Jack, Harvard University Press, 1991.
- "'Silencing the self' and women's mental health problems," a 2020 research review (Maji & Dixit).
The folded dream
Every woman had a dream once. A song she meant to learn. A city she wanted to see. A small shop she imagined. She did not throw these away. She folded them up and put them in a drawer, for later, when the children were older, when there was time. Later rarely comes. The drawer stays shut. And one day she cannot quite remember what was inside it, or who she was when she put it there.
Every woman I think about had a dream once. A real one.
A song she wanted to learn. A city she wanted to see. A small shop she imagined running. A subject she wanted to study. A painting she meant to finish.
She did not throw these away. That is the sad part. She folded them up, gently, and put them in a drawer. Later, she told herself. When the children are older. When there is money. When there is time.
Later almost never comes. The drawer stays shut. And one day she cannot quite remember what was inside it.
The cost of being the good one
We praise this. We call her selfless. We call her the heart of the home. In our films and our old stories, the perfect woman is always the one who gives everything up and asks for nothing back.
But there is a price hidden inside that praise. When a woman is told her whole value is in sacrifice, her own self slowly empties out. The space that should hold her wishes fills with everyone else's instead.
Giving something up for someone you love can be beautiful. It is beautiful when it is a choice. It is something else entirely when it is the only thing you are allowed to do.
She was praised for wanting nothing. No one noticed that the applause was for her slow disappearance.
I keep thinking about the difference between the two. One woman gives from a full cup, freely, and stays whole. Another gives until the cup is empty, because she was taught that an empty cup is what a good woman looks like.
Most of the women in our lives were handed the second story. Quietly. Lovingly. As if it were a gift.
We like to say a girl today can become anything. Many can, and that is real progress. But step into countless homes in 2026 and the drawer is still shut. The change reached some women. From inside that lucky half, it is easy to believe it reached everyone.
And she does not carry this story in one role, or under one name. She carries it under a hundred. I want to count them.
References
- "How Indian Women Are Destroying the Idea of Sacrifice (and Finding Self-Worth)," Times Life, 2025.
- "We Hate Indian Mothers Until We Become Them," Feminism in India, 2025.
- "Mother India: The Symbolism and Reality of Motherhood" (on the self-sacrificing 'good woman' archetype), 2026.
All her names
The same woman wears a hundred names. A mother, a daadi, a naani, an aunt, a sister, a grandmother. Each one sounds like love, and each one asks her to want a little less for herself. And the woman in her seventies, when the children are grown and the house is quiet, is finally free to want again, only to find she has forgotten how. The muscle that knows how to want, unused for fifty years, has wasted away.
The same woman answers to more names than anyone counts.
Somewhere she is a maa. Somewhere a daadi or a naani. A maami, a chaachi, a taayi. A behen. Later a bhanji, a naatin, a poti, a granddaughter who will grow into all the names above her.
Each name sounds like love. And each one quietly asks the same thing of her. Want less for yourself. Give more to us.
The aunt who feeds the whole family and eats standing in the kitchen. The grandmother who raises a second set of children. The sister who holds everyone together and is thanked by no one.
Through all of it, the question stays the same as before. Almost no one ever asks her what she wants. They ask what she can give.
And then comes the part that catches in my throat. The woman in her seventies.
She gave fifty years to caring for others. Then, slowly, the others go. The children grow up and move away. A husband passes. The house turns quiet.
More than half of older women here outlive their husbands. Many of them live alone. And for the first time in a lifetime, no one needs anything from her.
You would think this is freedom. At last, time that is only hers. At last, she can want things again.
But here is the cruel twist. The muscle that knows how to want has not been used in fifty years. It has wasted away. She sits in the quiet and cannot remember what she likes.
She was finally free to want something. And she realised, sitting alone, that she had forgotten how.
People who study older widows have found this again and again. When the caring ends, what arrives is not rest. It is an empty kind of loneliness, and the quiet ache of a self that was set aside so long ago that it can no longer be found.
She is not a figure from an old photograph. She is alive right now, in 2026, in the next lane, in the quiet flat one floor up. We pass her every day and call her sweet, and never once think to ask what she used to want.
I have been describing what we can see, if we choose to look. There is one room left. The one we walk past on purpose. I have to open it.
References
- "Old, Frail, and Poor: The Story of India's Elderly Women," Observer Research Foundation (ORF), 2025.
- "Lonely Twilights Among Older Women in India," The India Forum, 2024.
- "Social networks and their impact on access to health care: insights from older widows living alone in Kottayam, South India," Ageing & Society (Cambridge University Press), 2021.
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