You don’t get to ‘let’ me
As a girl born into an Indian family, there are certain things that you have to accept.
Like, you are going to be treated like a responsibility that has to be passed from one man to another. From the father to the brother and then to your husband. If you give birth to a boy, chances are he’ll dictate your life terms too.
When most men in your life decide that you are their responsibility without your choice on the matter, you also realise that responsibility translates to control.
Like if a pair of keys is your responsibility, you will not let it out of your sight. You will hold onto it and decide whom you will entrust them to. The keys, being an inanimate object, doesn’t have a say and you and your trusted peers get to decide what to do with it. You don’t want your keys to be lost and you cannot be irresponsible about it.
Same with the women in your family.
We are treated like keys. Like an object.
Objectifying us begins in our homes and it’s disguised as love and concern. You don’t even realise it. You are convinced it is love.
So you won’t let us wear that skirt we want to, because you’re being responsible about us.
You won’t let us drink and will probably say that we can do whatever we want once we’re married, because hey! now the husband is responsible. Then if he is okay with you drinking, you’re fortunate.
Your choice doesn’t matter. Your wishes don’t. You are treated like someone without a brain who cannot possibly understand the complications that arise with a single swig of beer. God forbid, if you like whiskey! Let me not even get started on whiskey, girls and the eyebrows it raises!
If you’re lucky, you’ll get a “drink with family”.
Otherwise, you hope that your husband is more liberal than your folks.
I wonder how many men get that. I wonder how many men have to even deal with being treated like imbecile human beings who can’t decide what’s best for them.
I wonder how many men have to wage a war over their clothes, then the time they get home, then having a career.
The range of issues and the severity of the ensuing battles is mind boggling and if you have a sense of humour, even funny!
I also wonder how many families realise that they’re not making strong individuals of us by letting us go to work. There should be no ‘let’. When you ‘let’ me, you disrespect me.
I don’t want to be called lucky because my family gives me freedom. Choice of clothes or having a career shouldn’t be deemed freedom. This association itself is a sad reality.
It will never cease to baffle me how many families take away free choice for love and how many women comply because “my family loves me and knows what is best for me”.
No.
Your family loves you and is trying to not get you raped; hopefully, because they don’t want you to go through the mental and physical torture and not because their honour will be lost. You have to be lucky for this one in countries like ours.
What they don’t get is that self defence class is probably a better idea than developing a horrible body image in a young girl’s head.
That raising a strong, independent woman who knows what’s right from wrong and can take care of herself is a job done well. There will be falls, but she’ll get up again all on her own.
We don’t have to be coddled, we just have to be respected. I don’t know why how you love your son and your daughter has to be different. Why even love from one’s parents has to be gender-biased.
The idea that you’re taking away our individuality doesn’t even occur to you. Control is disguised for love.
What’s even sadder is that most of us accept this idea of love and those you don’t, well, we’re the rebels who don’t toe the line.
The neighbourhood aunties cannot wait for us to stumble and fall.
But you know what? We’ll get up.