Being a girl in middle class India….

This is a topic that definitely requires an analysis to do justice for and a 250 word blog is not even a prelude I suppose. But with so much being said and so much more left out in the context of the Delhi rape case, I thought of articulating my bit here.  

I am not getting into rape incidents or their psychology here and I would like to trace a layer of my own identity instead, being a girl in the Great Indian middle class society. The dalit, the rural or the women below poverty line experience worse, but having knowledge or rather firsthand experience in urban middle class India, my articulation begins and ends there.

First of all, in 4 out of 5 cases, all the well-wishers decide how well dressed we are, how we behave , how pretty we are and how great our potential is to be the perfect daughters- in law ! No, it’s not a stereotype ! They do educate us, let us free to an extent but then it all somewhere boils down to marriage, looks and domestic stuff so much so that, our academic merits are like an add on !

Besides, most girls hide their love lives, their love for smoke and booze, they change into clothes of their choice in the malls, go on bike rides on sleep overs and then get back to being little girls at home! As much as their parents love them, they would never take this reality and my point here being why are we so often instructed? Why are we told not to do this that and the other so frequently, while boys our age are relatively free and most importantly does any of this helping at all in us being respected on a public bus or any other place where they grope, eve tease and molest us so brutally??

Viewed as objects in daddy dearest salwar kameez, made fun of in broad day light and eve teased on main roads... Somewhere something has just gone terribly wrong right??

However “The Indian Culture” and the mess it has been made of thinks otherwise. In any case, with due respect to past glory of my mother land, I like a thing or two about the Western culture that is so harshly blamed for our own evils. As much as women are ill-treated there as well, at least they alone are not forced to conform to meaningless norms, don a hundred masks and most importantly, they are not judged as soon as they begin to have their own life!

Well then, is hypocrisy a norm as well??