The Perfect Punjabi Woman Always Disappears
- Simranjit Sokhi
- Oct 25
- 7 min read
Please read this disclaimer before continuing.
While many may resonate with this piece, I understand that some may find parts of it challenging or even controversial. I want to be clear: the purpose of this reflection is not to discourage women from loving or caring for their families, nor to dismiss the genuine fulfillment many find in nurturing others. It is also not meant to shame men or to promote harmful generalizations about any group.
Rather, this is simply a reminder. No woman should be expected to lose or erase herself in the process of serving others. She is equally deserving of the right to serve herself with dignity, respect, and wholeness.
The patterns I describe are not isolated incidents. They reflect broader social expectations placed upon Punjabi-Sikh women, where labor within the home is often invisible and sacrifice is normalized. This reflection weaves together cultural memory, lived experiences, and generational inheritances that demand to be acknowledged.
I write this through the lens of Punjabi-Sikh womanhood, because it is the community I know best and the one I can speak for most truthfully. But I also recognize that this is part of a larger South Asian story — one that I hope to continue exploring, understanding, and advocating for.
Content Warning: Mentions of verbal and physical abuse.
Now, let's begin.
Punjabi-Sikh women live lives I like to call hauntingly beautiful.
These women have been raised to hold things together. To carry another's weight. To absorb, endure, and sacrifice. Across homes and histories, they've done it all.
Because for them, this is love.
But no one asks them what it costs.
No one teaches them how to stop.
Their instinct is to give.
Until their bodies give out.
And even then, they’ll find a way.
It begins early, before they even know it’s happening.
Little girls watch their mothers go “not that hungry” when someone asks for another roti. They see her pour glasses of water for everyone on a hot day, and notice no one thinks to ask if she wants one too.
The unspoken rule forms: Good women make do.
Their bodies reshape to create and hold new life. But if a daughter is born, shame greets them before celebration does.
They can't complain. They can't show exhaustion. They must raise perfect children — if they falter, it's her doing. If they flourish, what a great father they must have.
Know how to cook, clean, mend, and save. But know not to take credit.
Be humble. Talk softer. Laugh less. Sit straight. Be good.
Be normal.
It’s what every Punjabi woman before her has done. So why would she be any different?
Sometimes, though, the cracks show.
A sigh at the sink when she thinks no one hears.
The extra second on the sofa before rising again.
The quick, “It’s fine, I’ll do it,” when everyone else has left the dinner table.
But she can't stop. Because stopping feels like failing.
Failing herself, failing generations of mothers who bore the same weight.
What kind of culture asks its women to prove their worth through self-erasure?
What kind of legacy celebrates survival but refuses to name the cost?
The point here is not to demean these roles or suggest that care and service are beneath dignity.
They are mothers. Wives. Daughters.
But they are also simply themselves.
Whole.
Complex.
Deserving of respect and boundaries, and space to exist without apology.
We must unlearn the generational belief that a woman’s worth is measured by how much of herself she gives away.
The video shows a South Asian man openly claiming that his wife has no right to equality — that if he hits her, she must remain silent. In his eyes, her pain serves his pride; his violence is righteous, her resistance a sin. And what's worse is that the people around him see nothing wrong with his opinions.
We hear of men numbing themselves with alcohol and drugs, lashing out at their women at home who plead for change. One such woman, a Sikh-Amritdhari mother, had her Kes cut by her husband in a fit of rage (the aftermath shown in the video below).
The villagers say, "She never did anything wrong. He shouldn't have done that."
But I ask: if she had made a mistake, would that have justified this violence? How have we arrived at such a place in society where her dignity, her Kes, could ever be seen as conditional?
Her own words cut the deepest: "My only mistake was asking him to stop using drugs."
She cradles her son, stroking his Kes with desperation and love. And in her words, you can hear the impossible calculations:
I must stay strong for my son.
I must make sure he doesn’t suffer this.
I must make sure he doesn’t become his father.
But I must also make sure he doesn’t hate him.
How do I protect his Sikhi? How do I protect his heart?
Why is desperation and helplessness a second home for our women? Why does it feel familiar, so inherited? Why do marriage and motherhood mark the end of their lives?
ਖੰਨਿਅਹੁ ਤਿਖੀ ਵਾਲਹੁ ਨਿਕੀ ਏਤੁ ਮਾਰਗਿ ਜਾਣਾ ॥
As Guru Amar Das Ji reminds us, the spiritual path is sharper than the edge of a sword and thinner than a hair. To walk it, and to serve without losing oneself is among the hardest journeys. Only through the Guru’s grace can one find steadiness amid worldly desires.
And yet, Punjabi-Sikh women have been walking that path for generations, balancing devotion and duty, love and loss, without even knowing it. If Guru Sahib calls us to preserve that sacred balance, then who are we to let our women erase themselves in the process?
Too often, we mistake humility for disappearance, as if dissolving oneself is the highest form of devotion. But Guru’s path does not ask us to vanish; it asks us to be seen by our Guru.
When a woman forgets her own light in the name of serving others, we lose something sacred. The same shakti that animated Mai Bhago on the battlefield, is the same light that enables our mothers to teach the first words of Japji Sahib to their children. Both are walking the same razor’s edge, both carrying the same divine rhythm within them.
At the crossroads of sacrifice and survival, our women have always carried the heavier burden.
They have survived Partition. Migration. They rebuilt lives in strange countries with strange tongues. They held families together with prayers, nerves, and bloodlines of resilience — convinced that if they kept going, everything would be okay. That no matter what, they must remain in chardi kala.
But they’re not the heroes in history books.
They didn't sign treaties or deliver speeches.
But they raised the ones who did.
They fed them.
Taught them endurance.
Gave them the strength to carry on.
They kept those families breathing. They kept the culture alive when everything else was an attempt to erase it.
When fathers worked late shifts, mothers stayed awake too. When jobs were lost, when letters from home brought bad news, they folded their sorrows and tucked them away.
Their labor remains invisible. Their sacrifices are assumed.
Because that’s what Punjabi women do.
But behind that resilience are dreams they left in the shadows.
Hobbies they never picked up.
Jobs they never took.
Books they never read.
Songs they stopped singing.
Desires they tucked away because someone else always came first.
They were taught their sole purpose: become a service to everyone but themselves.
And what do we, as daughters, do?
We watch. We learn. But we also secretly fear becoming the same.
We carry their strength, their grace, their endurance.
But also their exhaustion.
Their self-erasure.
Their silence.
I am my mother’s daughter.
But she has taught me more than silence.
She has taught me words.
She has taught me expression — so that I don’t spend my life translating my feelings to the world.
She has taught me how to want more.
How to ask for more.
How to expect more.
To my Punjabi-Sikh women: you deserve everything but a generational curse.
You are more than the food you cook, the beds you make, the children you raise.
Tell your mother she can have the last slice of cake.
Tell her she can demand a glass of water without hesitation.
Tell her she can take her time.
Her story shouldn't end in the kitchen, at the dining table, or between folded bedsheets.
Our women live lives I once called hauntingly beautiful. But beauty should not have to come with haunting. It should not be shadowed by loss.
Guru Nanak Dev Ji reminds us: ਨਾਨਕ ਦੁਖੀਆ ਸਭੁ ਸੰਸਾਰੁ ॥ - that suffering is woven into existence; the whole world aches. But it is not meant to be worn as destiny.
The real tribute is not in simply admiring their sacrifice, but in making space for our women to exist — not as offerings, but as themselves. Just because this world is suffering, doesn't mean we allow that trauma be the jewel passed down to the next generations.
**roti (ਰੋਟੀ): South Asian flatbread
**Kes (ਕੇਸ): unshorn/uncut hair
**chardi kala (ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ): an attitude of high spirits, unwavering, and a state of certitude
**shakti (ਸ਼ਕਤੀ): power/authority/force
**Japji Sahib (ਜਪੁਜੀ ਸਾਹਿਬ): first Bani/Scripture of Guru Nanak Dev Ji; the first Bani of Nitnem — considered the essence of Sikhi
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This is great. Thank you for speaking on this.