FEMALE, age- 18
I know one thing for sure- the world around me is just getting fake and pure plastic. It is getting worse.
I have been brought up exclusive of the annoying stereotypical tag of a ‘girl child’. I haven’t been told to play only kitchen-set and not cricket. I haven’t been asked to wear only frocks and ribbons tied to my long, oiled and braided hair. Nope! It was just not I. I was a father’s daughter. There were times when I have seen and felt awful for a few girls in school who we call ‘suppressed’. I was happy about myself and I was content being myself.
Guess things are changing. Oh yes, they are! It’s been quite some time now since I started fighting and revolting against the intolerable pressure from all sides to groom myself for…err…the unknown Mr. Someone, who might be my husband in future (note-in a typical arranged Brahmin style wedding). I feel like I have been brought up with all the 24 carat love just to get married and delight someone else like sheep and hen are brought up just to make good tasty meat. (My stance on animal activism is a different thing I wouldn’t like to start off now!). My parents seem to be a little too worried about my marriage or my future, which is according to them marriage again. I believe I have the money, strength and determination to live alone but I would NOT marry someone who wants me to be his dream girl even if it means me walking upside down. Infact, I haven’t even thought about marriage in so much detail as my parents have. Parents are parents no matter what but I just wonder if they have to be that way.
I have been asked time and again to talk a lot lesser and talk softly. Well, I am nothing without my voice; I know I talk a lot and talk nonsense mostly but I would rather marry a deaf guy. The next, is a kind and sincere request from ‘all those who care’ to try and stop wearing long earrings!! I cannot do that; I would be a whole different person without them- a loser! Me living without earrings would be like doing Bhangra without being able to shake your shoulders(ahem!).
I wish it were my parents who could actually see the bruised and saturnine facet of myself that I hide from people everyday. I wish they could see through the smiles and laughs to understand what troubles me most and help me get over a few episodes of my past. I wish I could express myself to them. I am not apprehensive about marriage or the like but about myself. I just want them to let me be myself and not live the role of the filmy Brahmin parents.
I guess at sometime or the other, girls are always suppressed, atleast tried to. For instance, even the dress code in our college confines us to the narrow realm of the salwars and dupattas. Its not that I object to the dresscode, its just that I strongly belief that it is a different way of forcing onto a girl the entire girl child tag.
To me, the whole pressure of being a typical ‘Indian Brahmin girl’ has caused no change in me. I have been resisting, I have tried to be myself and in this bid, I think I have become inconsiderate and selfish. I don’t want to be that either but maybe that is what all ‘cultured Indian Brahmin girls’ who can think for themselves do or are required to do if not for themselves, to help sustain the whole feminism whatever we all talk about!
I have been brought up exclusive of the annoying stereotypical tag of a ‘girl child’. I haven’t been told to play only kitchen-set and not cricket. I haven’t been asked to wear only frocks and ribbons tied to my long, oiled and braided hair. Nope! It was just not I. I was a father’s daughter. There were times when I have seen and felt awful for a few girls in school who we call ‘suppressed’. I was happy about myself and I was content being myself.
Guess things are changing. Oh yes, they are! It’s been quite some time now since I started fighting and revolting against the intolerable pressure from all sides to groom myself for…err…the unknown Mr. Someone, who might be my husband in future (note-in a typical arranged Brahmin style wedding). I feel like I have been brought up with all the 24 carat love just to get married and delight someone else like sheep and hen are brought up just to make good tasty meat. (My stance on animal activism is a different thing I wouldn’t like to start off now!). My parents seem to be a little too worried about my marriage or my future, which is according to them marriage again. I believe I have the money, strength and determination to live alone but I would NOT marry someone who wants me to be his dream girl even if it means me walking upside down. Infact, I haven’t even thought about marriage in so much detail as my parents have. Parents are parents no matter what but I just wonder if they have to be that way.
I have been asked time and again to talk a lot lesser and talk softly. Well, I am nothing without my voice; I know I talk a lot and talk nonsense mostly but I would rather marry a deaf guy. The next, is a kind and sincere request from ‘all those who care’ to try and stop wearing long earrings!! I cannot do that; I would be a whole different person without them- a loser! Me living without earrings would be like doing Bhangra without being able to shake your shoulders(ahem!).
I wish it were my parents who could actually see the bruised and saturnine facet of myself that I hide from people everyday. I wish they could see through the smiles and laughs to understand what troubles me most and help me get over a few episodes of my past. I wish I could express myself to them. I am not apprehensive about marriage or the like but about myself. I just want them to let me be myself and not live the role of the filmy Brahmin parents.
I guess at sometime or the other, girls are always suppressed, atleast tried to. For instance, even the dress code in our college confines us to the narrow realm of the salwars and dupattas. Its not that I object to the dresscode, its just that I strongly belief that it is a different way of forcing onto a girl the entire girl child tag.
To me, the whole pressure of being a typical ‘Indian Brahmin girl’ has caused no change in me. I have been resisting, I have tried to be myself and in this bid, I think I have become inconsiderate and selfish. I don’t want to be that either but maybe that is what all ‘cultured Indian Brahmin girls’ who can think for themselves do or are required to do if not for themselves, to help sustain the whole feminism whatever we all talk about!
