JOIN USFreedom, equality and ….
How dare he ask me that? “As if I am here to serve all these people,” my friend fumed with anger. She was talking to me about a visit to her husband’s native town a few years back. This was her first trip to the ancestral town for a festival of the family deity where members of the larger extended family landed every year. She was narrating the incident about how a family elder asked her to serve coffee to all of them, “I want to taste how well the daughter-in-law can make coffee,” he had said. Doesn’t he know times have changed? I am a modern educated woman. I have my freedom, why should I sit and make coffee for him? Why should he judge me by my coffee-making skills? Does he think I am capable of only that? She went on and on...
Yes, I do hear these questions from women, especially young women, a lot. The questions around freedom, women’s rights, equality. Yes, these are valid questions. And high time these questions are asked. But, do we pause and think about the context in which these questions are being asked in educated Indian households?
Why should I make food for everyone? I will make what I want to eat and let everyone else make what they want! The whole week I am working, so on weekends, I will wake up when I want to! Why should I be at home if my husband’s friends or relatives are coming home? I will make plans for the weekend to go out with my friends, isn’t it my right to do so? Why should I talk to them if I don’t feel like it, I would rather sit in my room. It’s my money, why should I tell you what I plan to do with it? And so on…
Aren’t we familiar with these kinds of conversations happening around us? Most often, these come wrapped in the notion of freedom, equality, etc. No, these are not ground-breaking issues, but aren’t these also about what constitutes a family, a home?
We know of one extreme where women of earlier generations had no voice at all. But, now, in the name of freedom and equality, is the other extreme becoming the new normal?
Isn’t it time we start understanding what freedom, equality actually means? When did freedom become the license to demonstrate irresponsible behaviour, to display arrogance, to not be sensitive to others’ feelings?
Yes, and about my friend, I was curious as to what she did. She said she was irritated and she went inside the house, with her face obviously revealing the intensity of the questions she wanted to ask. And then she saw her husband’s old aunt in the kitchen. “Don’t you bother,” she said, “He is like that, trying to scare you. Just take this coffee that I have made and give it to them, let this be our secret.”
(The author is the host of a podcast that examines challenges faced by today’s Indian woman and proposes actionable strategies set in the Indian context.)