A walk to remember...

With Orion and Mohd.Rafi for company, I took my usual late evening ramble. When I’m alone, thoughts make uncanny visitations and for once I forget everything around me- the pangs of growing up and the trials and tribulations of young adulthood. Most of the time, I think about my past, present and future or simply admire the creamy brilliance of the Moon smiling down on me and purge all the ugliness which house my soul occasionally. This time, I felt quite mature in my soul and was thinking about stuff like feminism and women empowerment. Do those things ever exist in reality? Or is it only the chosen few who practice it? Rafi saab was singing the beautiful ‘O mere shahekhubaan’ in the backdrop. Somehow, even serious thinking goes well with music.

Coming back to my subject… equality of men and women never really exist. For instance, when I registered for my PhD a few months back, nobody was really over the moon (except me, of course!). Some even remarked “How are you going to find a guy for yourself to marry? It’s tough finding an equally qualified guy for you” Even as I swallowed this ‘off colour’ remark from well meaning but pesky aunties, I started to think for myself. Nobody ever says such things to a guy who is making waves in his career or education. It is the girl who has to put up with these things and worse ‘smile’ through all these pretending as though nothing has ever gone wrong.

Now Rafi saab was crooning the romantic ‘Teri aankhon ke siwa’…

Our society views women as a commodity for marriage no matter how intelligent or accomplished she is. Her each and every move is seen as a prelude to getting married successfully - be it the idea of making her well versed in the art of cooking or rigging her up in front of a strange guy in the most absurd ‘girl-seeing’ ritual. Nothing is taught to her for its own sake. Everything should be learnt to please your prospective husband- ‘they’ say. Hang the ‘they’! The beautiful way of finding true-love cannot be made more prosaic than this. I think women are partly responsible for this. The other day, my close friend who is a happy homemaker was telling me (read casting upon me!) that men need constant ego-massage. Is it due to the insecurity in which women-kind is steeped since aeons which made her talk like that? She pointed out to me that divorces are on the rise because of women getting higher education these days. I was speechless at this preposterous remark of my bosom friend. Are bitterness and subjugation better than divorce?

For a marriage to work, both the spouses should play an equal role in the process of adjustment. It is not a ‘Tu Tu main main’ blame-game. I argued that it is unfair to blame only the woman as the cause of a divorce. My friend flatly disagreed with me. It was disgusting to hear from her that ‘financial empowerment’ has made women arrogant. Why confuse independence with arrogance? Does anyone dare to say these things to a man? Why can’t people take an objective view of things? Here was a well educated woman who felt that women are the root-cause of something as serious as divorce. Are men Gods? It took all my love for my friend to stop me from boxing her ears.

When it comes to other pointless stuff like astrology, it is the woman who is victimized again. A girl is subjected to stigma if she happens to belong to a particular star. The same doesn’t apply for men. People find it easy to believe in the useless squares they call horoscopes rather than concrete aspects like family, education and habits. I find the matrimonial ads in the newspapers extremely silly- ‘Wanted slim, fair, tall, beautiful, well-educated (read: not educated more than the guy in question), domestically-trained (are women dogs?) girl for a blah… blah… blah… Don’t they have enough sense to understand that it is an impossibility to find all these in one single human being? What do they have in mind- a happy marriage or a glamorous fashion-show? Even in Mahabharat, when Draupadi did penance to get a good husband with different virtues, God (seeing the futility and impossibility of her penance) answered her prayers by marrying her to five husbands. With the puranas for proof, our society still behaves in such a crude manner. Sometimes our society stinks beyond words.

My neighbour suffers continuous verbal abuse from her husband everyday. Once, I was stunned to see him yelling at her and calling her names at the door-step just because she was a bit late in opening the door for him. She’d never dream of turning that jerk to the police. She suffers everyday, silently. Is this how you ‘save’ a marriage? Just because he is the sole financial support to the family doesn’t mean that he has the right to abuse her. I know millions of silent-victims like her. They wouldn’t let anyone expose such barbaric behaviours of their husbands-they are quite silly about ‘thaali’, ‘pottu’ and other such meaningless stuff. When a relationship is not built on the strong foundation of mutual respect and love, these symbolisms don’t have any value. Unfortunately, this is the ‘strategy’ of many women for saving the relationship.

‘Main kahin kavi na ban jaaoon’ was the next melody. My head was spinning by this time. Women and victimization are synonyms, I guess. When one talks of marital adjustment, it is the woman who suffers continuous blows to her ego which is as important to her as it for any man. When a woman does something for familial harmony, it is termed as adjustment, she is taken for granted and is considered part of her sex-role typing. On the other hand, if a man does something (essentially not as a part of the male sex role typing) it is regarded as a great favour or achievement. These disparities will exist as long as the sun shines.

Now it was ‘sau baar janam lenge’…Was this a coincidence???