My friend Kalpana, a newspaper columnist in Mumbai, told me once about a speech she had given to a group of students at a women's college. She's been asked to talk to them about the ways women's lives were changing in India and instead found herself talking about all the things that have stayed the same. Kalpana asked the students to biggest issue in their lives; they all said marriage. Then she asked for show of hands from those who would be responsible for deciding who they would marry, and none of the women stirred. When she asked how many wanted to be able to make that decision, all the hands flew into the air. The experience stuck with her.
"It's a terribly frustrating time for young women," she said. "they're allowed to make all kinds of choices that previous generations of women couldn't make in India——what they will study, where they will work, where they will live. And yet, when it comes to the most important decision of their lives, their parents don't trust them with it. It's like they're only partly allowed to enter the real world."
Sideways on A Scooter, Life and Love in India, P133
Miranda Kennedy
ISBN 978-1-4000-6786-2
No comments :
Post a Comment