Just a little dream...

The BOX- are you in it or outside it?

If there was a medicine that could cure this disease called- ownership and mentality ‘Come on, you have to be set in the mould’, I would honestly, give my right hand for it. There is a certain paradigm shift in the psyche of the women of a household- especially those Indian families that are still stemmed deeply into conventional mindset where the daughter-in-law has to completely reboot her brain and system and become 'one' with the in-laws.  

Anything that isn’t in conformity with this convention and the norm doesn’t agree with the digestive system- it creates indigestion, acidity and dry cough (if you may laugh at my analogy).

So does the other younger women (who might not have found their foothold in yet another conventional household and wonder where to fit in once a ‘bhabi’ has suddenly encroached into their space) of the house wonder ‘what the hell is going on- she isn’t the way we thought she would be.’

Now, you genuinely forgot to open ‘her’ brain and feed it with the ‘right kind of behaviour’. And all for the line 'and we lived happily ever after’ to really show up when you all got together as a family to extended families.

In this whole game of trying to make the girl fit ‘in the box’, the GIRL is forgotten. 

She is simply just a girl-  and rather still inanimate and without emotions- and that comes out in the open once she realizes if she is anything other than what is expected, she will be attacked and singled out repeatedly. 

She is marked out and termed ‘you are not a part of us’ because she technically isn’t. And that is actually true....... cause she has been educated to realise, she is an individual. 

She has been raised in the young India to stand for herself and not depend on the approval of the so called ‘patriarchal father-in-law and mother in-law’. She has an inner voice and a strong conscience which has given her the gift of respecting her life as much as the morality to treat others with the same respect.

So where does the jarring in the bandwagon come? Does it come from the fact that she is the window to a future that the family she married into, refuses to see? Does it come from the fact that we continue to harp about being modern? We use smartphones, chat and leave tweets regularly. We are able to eat in fancy restaurants. But have we been able to make a fundamental change in our mindset?

Modernity is a false perception of India. It doesn’t exist in the clothes and the brands we wear. It shows in the way to continue to treat the women in our households- where things are not evident. It is there where the fight for the survival and flourishing of the young India is happening. It is the place where, if like-minded women, if don’t hold hands and walk together, any amount of emancipation is an eye wash.