My country is a land of disparity
(or may be the whole earth is, just that my experiences mainly
happened in my country, so I can surely say this about my home land).
Women are perennially treated
separately than men in India(the traditions always wanted to enhance
the differences beyond biology). To a perennial travesty is
attributed this extremely weird custom of “Milnis”.
When parents marry their daughter,
they want to splurge on their child. They buy her new clothes,
jewelry, home appliances, four wheeler and what not. This is a very
much obvious phenomenon. However, irrespective of willing or not
willing, the girl’s parents are expected to gift all the family and
relatives of the groom with clothes(irrespective of how much distant
the relative might be), sweets, dry fruits and goodies of all possible kinds. And yes, remember, if you have engagement
and marriage as two separate celebrations, double the number of
clothes.. Ah, the great tradition does not end here. The parents of
the groom are also gifted with gold ornaments!! For one year(atleast)
post marriage, whenever any festival comes post marriage, the parents
and kins of groom are to be gifted with sweets and clothes by the
bride’s parents. Not to mention the money, this is prefixed with
each costume as “shagan”.
Now, everytime the girl bears a
child/children, her parents have to gift the whole family and
relatives of boy with clothes and money. After all, their girl has
created another liability in the life of in-laws by bearing a child
for her in laws and extending their lineage!
Point worth mention I forgot: In the
whole drama, the parents of the groom have no accountability to gift
anything to the parents/family of the bride in the whole life, if the
bride has any younger brother, then he will have one costume as gift for life
from the in laws of her sister at the time of marriage.
How traditional… yey!
The only rationale whole drama seems
to scream so nudely is: “In marriage, the girl’s parents are
actually the culprits of giving birth to a girl. At the time of
marriage, they are basically handing over their lifetime burden to
the groom, so, they have to keep paying off as much as possible time
to time in disguise of being traditional”.
When the modern middle class parents
have a girl as their child, their education and thought process leads
to upbringing of a daughter who is well educated and well earning.
When, at the time of their marriages, such independent and educated
girls are tied to the cliché of maltraditions by their not so daring
parents, they are bound to feel insulted and strangled the whole of
their life. They get up everyday trying to solve the riddle of where
are they lacking as compared to their husbands so that their parents
not only donated their daughter and her life long earnings, but are
also paying extra on each festival to their daughter's in laws. ..
A girl, who spent her childhood
dreaming about helping her middle class family’s monthly finances
one day, finds herself in an altogether strange world where not only
she is barred from financing her own parents, but her parents are
rather obliged to spend on her in laws every now and then. If, she,
being the “bahu”(daughter in law), washes the utensils at the
place of her in laws, it’s a feather in her cap. But if her
husband, who becomes the “damaad”(son in law), does same at her
parent’s place, nobody likes it(None of damaads tend to be so humble
either.. huh).
We should not blame anyone who is
exercising female foeticides unless we, ourselves change our mutated
tendency of observing our own daughter as “paraya dhan(mortgaged asset)” which
practically comes out to be worse than a mortgaged asset on the ground.
PS: I really
appreciate the oneness and equality so clearly observed by tribals
(the so called uneducated and half civilized human clans). I think
they are far more advance in social set up than the pseudo modern
class we live in. I heard that, the boy’s parents always pay back
something to the girl’s parents at the time of marriage (since the
girl’s parents are donating their precious child to the boy’s
parents for an association lifelong). This is a better logic(if not
best) than ours… NO?
