Yes, we live in a world of paradoxes and ironies. When I step out in the evening, my mother is concerned that she doesn't know the guy I am going out with, well not that well. But she didn't think twice before she allowed me to go to bed with a stranger – my husband. I work in an MNC, but when my in-laws are around I put vermilion in my neatly parted hair and never are my wrists, neck and ears unadorned. I can’t hold my husband’s hands in public, but am expected to produce an heir before I complete a year of my marriage. I am supposed to be a modern, independent woman, working in the field of my own choice, rubbing shoulders with my male counterparts, but it’s me who is supposed to hand my husband the glass of water. I teach my boy to not cry and be a man, he hears make a woman cry to be a man. My mother wants me to dominate my husband, but her son to be the man and never listen to his wife. People can piss but not kiss in public. Rape goes unpunished but a love among the members of the same sex is deemed “unnatural”. I get just one coach in the Delhi metro but am molested and told to go back to the ladies coach if I step into a general one. But I wonder what has changed since the last generation! Facebook, whatsapp and twitter? Is that all?
No, that isn't all. I can express my opinions to my husband and in-laws, without being reprimanded, shouted at or maybe beaten. A mother can put in an ad for a groom for her gay son. Rape victims have found support. I have a choice to know the stranger I am supposed to marry. I can drive down to wherever I need to be, without depending on the man of the house. I can support my own family without raising eyebrows. I can walk out of a terrible marriage and not be branded “characterless”. But what has not changed is that people still excel at criticizing. Criticism just for the heck of it. So what if she wants an Iyer groom for her Iyer son. We ignore the big step that she has taken in accepting a big part of her son’s life and find faults in her preferences! She respects his preference, why can’t we respect hers?
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