She was really
looking beautiful, it was her wedding day. The day she was born she was
her father's princess. She was not asked to wear salwar kameez to a wedding but
she still chose the shimmering dresses for the occasions. She was educated in
the best school in town, the same as her brother, she chose to learn swimming
but as she grew up she left and started learning music, saying she had learnt
it enough. Her brother started dancing lessons & left after some time to
start football. They studied hard and grew up to be very successful and had to
move out of town. She started dating a good looking man and her parents were
dying to meet him. And two years down the line she is getting married to him.
The pretty bride was blushing in her pink lehenga & gold jewellery. She
won't have to live with her in-laws, they have a separate house in the same
city, they didn't want to interfere.
She was on leave
for two months after the wedding, she had to setup the whole house, actually
her husband had some urgent work and he would be going to States. She prefers
to wear the sindoor and mangalsutra, she had actually lost a lot of weight too.
It is obvious her life had changed completely. She had a life all girls would
envy they said, no doubt, the perfect life I would say.
Suddenly the
other day I bumped into her brother he had come to visit her. We enjoyed a long
afternoon conversation on my couch, he was always an excellent guy to speak to.
He was a Psychology major and was not really appreciated by his father, but he
was doing well and was soon going to get his papers published. He also told he
again started dancing professionally & was learning music too, didn't
really like playing on the field that much. He had always been different
from the rest of the boys I knew, I really didn't know what was different about
him. We were going through his sister's wedding photographs and he asked me why
did she wear such a heavy bridal lehenga which she would never even take out of
her closet again. I was surprised it was her wedding, why would she not. he
said wedding is a one-day affair & marriage would be for a life time. I
didn't say a word.
I learnt some
thing that day, I just knew why he was so different. He didn't believe in the
unseen societal norms. We all are just afraid to break these norms,
subconsciously we just are tied in these unseen chains. Whenever we are
questioned about it logically our mind learns to rebel it by saying it's my
choice. The siblings were brought up in the same house and given equal
opportunities, but one chose to follow the same societal norms of wearing
Indian attire at social gatherings, reducing physical exercise because her body
was changing, wearing costly clothing on her wedding, running the
household and letting her husband grow in his career and that is the dream
because we were conditioned to it. She never questioned it because she was
never forced to do it & she felt prey to thinking that it was her choice. Even
when her in-laws were not around she wanted to feel that she was married by
wearing the mangalsutra. Did this compulsion ever occur to her husband, I
doubt. He was caught in another trap where he had to be a successful workaholic
who would earn enough to provide his family well, excellent sportsman great if
it was cricket or football, a rebel who would speak up against his family if
needed and a strong guy who would face it all without crying. If we think he
was privileged we are so wrong he has his own battles to fight, they might be
different but are more difficult because nobody talks about them.
The expectation
was set high, not according to our capabilities, not our religion, nationality,
color, caste, creed but our gender. Let us just try to be equal halves.
