Are you are an Indian girl in your early twenties? Do you know what is going to happen in the next four years or so? Yes, you do know it. And you also know that your fate is kind of unfair, unexplained and yet you will not protest. Even I won’t, because we are raised in such a way that we don’t ask questions, we just accept silently. Samuel Beckett said, “When you are up to your neck in shit, all you can do is sing”. This probably is the best way we young Indian ladies can describe our fate.
We all know that one fine morning, we will get up and our parents will ask us to get ready, take a tray, pour six cups of tea and enter the living hall to meet our groom. Today, just a few years back, we are vulnerable. They expect us to stay miles away from every boy who comes across. They are over protective, they won’t let us go anywhere all alone. But one fine day we will just grow up so much that we will have to go and live with absolutely new people, a stranger, and spend all our life there with them. No, I am not saying that our opinions are not asked for, we surely are asked about our choice. They do ensure our comfort and compatibility (luckily we have at-least developed that much). But I am openly critical of the unreasonable manner in which we are suddenly expected to grow up, and go away, live our own life, among strangers. We are the pampered princess of our families, protected from every streak of what is considered “societally wrong”, and suddenly one day we are forced into new relationships and situations that have been totally covered before. We spend our life curtained from the “bad world”, because we are daughters of the family.
I don’t know who I should address my question to. This is a major question in itself. What I seek an answer to is why even in this 21st century, we are still the weaker sex, who needs to be protected, covered, guided and directed for all their lives. Why can’t we openly choose our partners, speak of it to our parents. We have voting rights, right to have sex, right to drink, and yet we don’t have the right to choose for our own life partner? Why? Why is it a taboo? A girl expected to grow up in just one day is right but learning and growing up gradually is wrong? Why?
Also read: The 20s And The Big M: Why Is Marriage Supposed To Be The Zenith Of A Girl’s Existence?