A girl still high on her teenage and raring to go. She wants to study. But her parents from Neyveli thought it finer to pack her off in marriage to a `well-paid' employee of a top infrastructure company.
Her prospective parents-in-law or mother-in-law had promised to let her continue studies soon after marriage. Once married (and for hardly a month), pressure has begun. To conceive. And to place a grandchild in mom-in-law's lap. Her husband, still basking in the warmth of his new found love, has bowed in to his mother's demands. And although he understands the importance of her need for graduation, he prefers to give in to his mother's craving for a grandchild (read grandson). In semi-urban vocabulary, the word grandchild is synonymous with grandson.
Shocked by this revelation bordering on voyeurism, I lectured her about sticking to her guns and studying further. She did not turn up to meet me for weeks after that.
Another neighbour said she managed to enroll for a degree course by post. Huh! Relief.
A couple of days back, we caught up for a chat at another neighbour's. Every few minutes she would look up the clock. Deadline 8.30 pm. That's when her husband returns from home. She wanted to get back for him. In the banter that followed, she said she had to remove her husband's shoes from his tired feet when he came home!
What do I say? Anger? Irk? Irritation? Amusement! My head reeled when she rattled this off in all innocence (I say this because most wives hide their obedience with a mask of independence, and skillfully).
The truth is, that she was schooled at it. To be a maid, to serve her husband's ego, to pamper his masculinity and be the obedient housekeeper.
``My father asked me to do all this for him - remove his footwear as soon as he came home, stay home when he arrived, cater to him in every possible way,'' said the girl. That day, she had not removed his footwear, and the husband who got pampered for a couple of months, was only too angry about it.
At 19, she should have been prancing about at college and having the best time of her life. Instead, here she is, cooking and cleaning every day, not willing to step out of home without her husband...
My neighbour also hinted that dowry had changed hands in her marriage. Huh! Dowry from her parents to his parents, so that she becomes his maid without a pay.
It's 21st century for God's sake! Our metros may scream economic independence for women, changing attitudes and even men who understand better. But the real India is this - where women are programmed to nurture their slavish attitude, serve their husbands, their parents in law, their children, and probably even grandchildren.
Maternal instinct and Venutian love is very inherent in the woman. Nothing more satisfying for her than her man admiring her beauty, her cooking and her housekeeping. What is not right is this horrible conditioning of her mind, to massage the male ego. Servility and submissiveness are dumped so extensively into the woman's mind, that they take on the shape of emotional dependence.
And emotional dependence is also the result of emotional abuse -- a term yet to find usage in this part of the world. Tell me which family is free of emotional abuse? And which woman has not given in to it at some point of her life or the other?
Our parents try their best to programme our minds for a married life. Pack off and let go of the daughter. Train her to be a wife. A submissive one at that. But pack her off still. With enough cash and kind. Make her a slave.
When things go wrong in her marriage, think of the society first and her welfare the last...this cycle will not end....not at this rate.
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