Equality

It's not something you see or hear everyday. But once you start looking, you see it everywhere. You see it in the glances of your neighbours, your relatives. You hear it in the conversations behind locked doors of 'civilized' people. You sometimes see a flash of it in the people you love most- your mother, father, grandmother or aunt. Their views. Their comments. Their whole ideology. "Did you cut your hair?"

"Yes"

"Girls used to be different before. Now they go  looking like whatever they want. This generation only is like this." "Don't you have any kids around your age here who you can play with?"

"Yes but they are all boys."

"Boys?! Oh then you shouldn't talk to them." "Why are you sitting like that?"

"Like what?"

"Sit respectably." "Do you know how to cook?"

"Kindof"

"God, what will you do with these kind of answers, when you go to the in-laws' house?"

"If you dress and talk like that, your future will not be good." They teach you to be good wives, they teach you to make all the sacrifices. You must be the one who raises the child, who goes to work and does the cooking. You must be the one to bear the snide comments and the taunts because you were born to bear all this weren't you? It's written in your destiny. You must be the one to stay away, to ignore because  you can't stop them, they're men, they're entitled to everything right?

Wear what you want, talk the way you want to, to whomsoever you wish. What needs to be changed is their perspective. Don't compromise for anyone or anything. Who said only wives do the cooking? When wives now have the best jobs, husbands shouldn't be ashamed to have some culinary skills. When you've made your mark in every sphere and proven yourself as an equal then what's there to fear? 

You go girl.

~Meenakshi Suresh