“She’s a lawyer, must be a loud mouth and not a marriage material” says one of the random Aunty I met at a cousin’s wedding. There begins the questioning of the professional stereotype which is still a modern concept. Coz’ Hey! Let’s not forget this privilege of education is a gift by our society. Please do not mistake my thoughts for spite but to be my sheer benevolence towards the society.
I do not know where to begin with but as long as I can recall it has always been the women surrounded with the social stigma before marriage. We have been fighting for this gender disparity from time immemorial but there’s still a lot to change. The girl should be married at the right age and the girl must be younger than the boy because a mature man will be a better suitor. To be truly honest at times it’s difficult to blame the parents as the society is sacrosanct in Indian living. The social and the cultural fear of not leading successful married life forces to fall for these notions of the society. The color of the skin decides one’s fate which led the market for fairness creams soaring high. Too tall, too short, over educated, undereducated, too healthy, very thin and the list goes on to find the suitable girl to a suitable boy.
There’s a beautiful stanza from a poem which I came across translated from Kannada by A.K Ramanujan which reads as follows-
“…..Breaking out of the dam
You’ve built, swelling
in a thunderstorm,
roaring through the land,
let me live, very different,
from you, Mother
Let go and make way.”
These lines have stayed with me as the daughter hustles to live differently from what her mother has been through. She encourages her mother to accept that we as women are no less than anybody and have the courage to fulfill one’s desire. Marriage is not the ultimate goal in life but it should come as a natural choice to each one of us disregarding the gender that we associate ourselves with.