I am sorry, but I can never think of you to be equal to us. It doesn’t matter how much I talk about gender equality, how strongly I support women empowerment or how many seminars I attend on sexual harassment – this is just what society has taught me to be, today.
When I was a child, I used to cry a lot, and the people around me used to tell me not to cry like a girl. Obviously, I am not supposed to cry like a girl or behave in any other fashion that somehow resembles a girl, because it implies I am weak and not worth anything. After all, girls and boys are not the same.
At our primary school, when we did something stupid in class, we were asked to sit with the girls as a punishment. Yes, sitting with the girls was considered ‘punishment’. And why not? We are two totally separate entities.
In class 7, our class-topper was a girl. A shame for all the boys, right? At least, that’s what one of our teachers told us. “All the boys in the class should be ashamed,” she said. And we felt ashamed. A girl isn’t supposed to top the class. We will never tolerate it. Not only in class, nowhere can she be above us – or so we were taught. It will hurt our pride, our manhood. After all, we are men, and they are women – we are not the same.
During my teenage years, I loved to do my work by myself. I used to wash my uniform, polish my shoes, and make my tea. One day, a relative came and scolded me for doing this work. According to him, this work was for my mother and sisters, not me. I couldn’t understand which law I was breaking that prohibited me from doing those things, but after that day, I stopped doing it. Men and women aren’t the same, after all.
There have been times when a scumbag relative, an inhuman teacher or someone who was of the age of the girl’s father tried to molest her. Her family knows it, her mother knows it. And you know what happens after that? Nothing. Because it’s not a big deal. She makes tea for him the next time he visits.
And how can her family do anything? If they do, the neighbour will know, the society will know, the whole world will know. What can be a more fascinating story for an afternoon gossip session? People will make fun of us – and the biggest thing, who will marry her? After all, she needs a husband, a pati-parameswar – that’s her destiny. Her biggest strength is her ability to give life, and we always make a joke of it.
A woman gives her everything for her country, to make her country proud. And, yes, all of us feel proud when she lifts the trophy with the national flag on her shoulder. And, then we proudly say, “Our daughters are doing the job of our men.” Yes, ‘the job of our men’. Because winning something, representing one’s family, one’s country, is the job of men. We don’t expect the women to do it. After all, we are not the same.
How can we be equal when the noblest king can gamble his wife? When the daughter of a king and the wife of five of the greatest heroes loses her dignity in an assembly full of unstoppable warriors and the wisest and greatest people of all time, and everyone plays the role of a mere spectator? When even one god, who knows everything, can suspect his wife and ask her to prove her chastity by diving into a fire? And the worst thing is that nobody is even allowed to question any of this.
Maybe I am making no sense. Maybe all I am saying is utterly irrelevant. Maybe I am just trying to defend myself by blaming the society and the system for not being able to consider both men and women as equal, for not being able to understand that neither are women the manifestations of goddesses, nor are men the manifestations of gods. We are all just human beings – physically different, yes – but beyond bones and flesh, we are all part of the same universal energy. But that’s what we have been doing, defending ourselves – too coward to accept that somewhere, we love this false legacy of dominance and the vague feeling of superiority.