About women and 'not many' options.

The trigger for this piece is not just 'Dil Dhadakne Do'(a bollywood movie), but parallel fragments of conversations around me w.r.t to life of a women as majority of middle class girls would have seen growing up.

The dialogue of Ranveer Singh to her mom 'Kahan jaati aap?' says it all. For your reference, here he yells at her mother accusing her of staying with her husband, who apparently has cheated on him several times and does not value her, only because she did not have any place else to go. 

This is why marriages of our parents and aunties succeeded many times, because women could not see a place to go to, isn't it? Atleast I felt so a lot. An affair may not be required to set off this feeling of wanting a way out of marriage. It may be just the fact that you cannot make it work any more. Don't take me as a proponent of breaking marriages. I am personally someone who would go all the way through, do everything to make it work and breakup does not come easy to me. But at the same time, I have felt that courage that women lack to move away from a relationship that is beyond repair is majorly because they do not see themselves as confident enough to be able to lead their own lives. 

While I grew up to be independent because my father wanted me to be, and I am ever grateful, I also became sensitive to fact that a greater proportion of women that I saw around me fuelled an urge in me to suggest ways to empower them mentally in some way or the other, like it would always come to discussions where I would ask them about how they like to spend their leisure times and propagate tutions, cooking classes, meditations etc to such an end that it would almost feel like I am choking the idea down their throat whether they want to or not. So happened because I really wanted them to feel more at peace and confident about themselves to be able to value their presence in someone's life rather than being complacent with least acknowledgement of their irreplaceable existence. It bothered, and still does, that someone stays because she has no place to go. I am glad to be born in an era when 'What I want' is the driving idea of life and in a family which taught me not take this idea 'too far' and hence be able to strike a fine balance, and I wish that every lady that I meet is able to feel and live the former part of it where when we meet we can talk about or I don't mind listening to her about how she finds it satisfying to have her yoga class in the evening, about how she spares herself of cooking on Sundays and lets her husband take charge or about how she is planning to start her own facebook page.

These simple acts for 'herself' are acts of empowerment and an essential and a very small change that we can try to bring. May be it is time to give back to our mothers and mother like figures who have abled us to write about it.