Inspiring women series: part 2

Inspiring women series: part 2

If we make a deep analysis, marriages are nothing more than a social necessity.
A marriage is a social and financial security assurance for most of the parents of the girl child.
For the groom’s family , a marriage will bring in a housekeeper, a lady attendant to take care of the large joint family, a laxmi whose kundli will improve their financial prospects , a companion to their son to take care of all his needs etc.. The list is endless.
Actually in a practical sense men need marriage more than women.
If the world was a safe place for women, if women were treated as equal beings, given equal rights and respect maybe we can do away with the marriage structure itself.
It is liberating to not remain tied to the relations and liabilities which come with marriage alone.
It is absolutely beautiful to get up in the morning without having the pressure to go out and earn for the family or do all the household chores for the family.
Maybe given all the free time in lieu of not being married, we would have produced more artists, politicians, social workers and scientists.
We waste so much of our energy on a daily basis in fulfilling enforced, entrusted formalities which we actually don’t enjoy doing. In due course of time a woman is conditioned to believe that she is incomplete without a family which includes husband, children and the extended family, seeing no alternative to it, she accepts it as her innate duty to get married and serve all the relations.
In a marriage we transfer our powers, our rights to the in laws, we barter our freedom to duties which are thrusted upon us by the new relations which develop overnight just by the virtue of swath here.
We get the thought of getting our girls married because we fear for their social and financial security after we are gone.
We can easily alleviate this fear
1. By investing on our girls exactly the way we invest on our boys to make them self reliable.
2. By working towards making this world a safer place for single women.
The first step towards creating a fair society is to accept Single women, single mothers without any qualms. The second step is to allow them to take their decisions.
I met a girl recently who echoed these thoughts. She is the third daughter of her parents; they are not blessed with any male progeny.
She decided to remain single for now as she doesn’t want to transfer the rights on her body and mind to someone else.
She is a siliguri girl in her late twenties, working in Delhi, has clear long term and short term goals for her work and studies, and has a bucket list of places to see and things to do. She is a happy contended simple harmless person.
Let us give her and the likes of her a right to live their life the way they want to without imparting the gyan on the NECESSITY of getting married.
AND LET US ALSO STOP GIVING GYAN TO MARRIED WOMEN TO BECOME MOTHERS, AND MOTHERS OF A SINGLE CHILD TO HAVE A SECOND ONE.
Let us stop conditioning, stereotyping and eulogizing women as wives and mothers only. There is more to her than what we want for her. We cannot decide what makes one a complete woman.
There is no single, formula mantra, benchmark or prototype.
Every woman can be different; can be at both extremes without owing any explanation to anyone.
Saraswati to kali to durga to laxmi to mother Mary to Ayesha to yasodhara to Diana to Marie curie ……
Let us celebrate every woman.