“A Wife” is a better half,a partner that a man chooses to spend the highs and lows of his life with. At-least that’s what I thought until I met this “Educated Techie”(pun intended).
The Indian literacy rate stands at 74.04% in 2011 and it grew from 12% at the end of 1947. Now when a person or a society is educated, apart from the degrees and certificates, one is assumed to have also gained in perspective as an Individual. Indian Civilization since its very inception has to my view contradicted itself in the position it offered to its women folk. On one hand, this society of ours prays and keeps fasts in the names of Goddesses;walk for miles and miles to visit shrines of “matas” and give sermons on how these Goddesses need to be worshiped ; while on the other hand a women who is supposed to be a manifestation of the goddess herself is expected to curb all her wishes and work like a unpaid slave for her family…However I was in the view that education changes these dogmatic individuals into truly literate and tolerant…But I was shell shocked when an educated Techie working in a reputed IT company (Lets say Mr X) put forth some of his views….
Mr X here said in plain and simple terms that like the quintessential “ramu kaka” of Hindi movies performs all the household chores and takes care of the family,the wife is just that with a social certificate of being married to a man of the house”….Imagine a well educated man,well at-least in terms of degrees,holding such opinion…He goes to add on more…Marriage to him was only a means to bring a person into his parents lives who would be his proxy self at his ancestral home…This because his parents would not and cannot shift to the city with him…Also, he would marry because he has the “responsibility” of taking care of his parents which evidently he would fulfill by keeping his wife with his parents….So naive !! Well after listening to all this, all I wanted do is boil him in a cauldron till he changed his views but one can only persuade so much…I along with a colleague tried to show him some light but he outright rejected our views with anecdotes of his own. To my surprise he doesn’t stop there, he further goes on to add that he will never by choice marry a girl who has no brothers because then she would want to take care of her family…heights of idiocy I must say…!!
So to sum up he wants a wife not for himself but for his family… He wants to fulfill his duties to his family virtually by letting his wife live a life without her husband while he still continues on his free lifestyle miles away…In a nutshell,he has no regards for the lady who would come into his life,no regard for his future spouses existence…For him she has only been born to represent him and fulfill his duties within the walls of his ancestral home with his parents….What about the woman who marries him..Is she not an individual?Can she ever live life according to her terms? Problem is even such men do get married and they will make the live of another woman miserable ‘coz whether we like it or not; to this day not every woman of our country has the final say in choosing their life partners barring a lucky few…
I always thought the answer to the various evils that plague our society, and our women at large, is Education…but I am so disappointed that even people equipped with all the knowledge of the world still believe in such concocted traditions…
If not even education, then what will eradicate such thought processes from this country??? I truly have no idea…!! For what according to me was the weapon to fight these evils seem to have failed today as I listen to the narcissistic opinions of that so called learned Software Engineer…
All I can say is that thanks to such inconsiderate nincompoops;education and marriage have been trivialized.
Hey Naba,
you reposted it 🙂 does that techie know abt ur Blog, he must know and read it. 🙂 May be you get new heat from him this time … :p