She Behind The Veil

  She behind the veil

                                                    -Ish

"They thought you were a boy." Eyes wide opened, she was curiously listening to the story of her birth.

Just think of a very small girl how she would have felt when she was told her birth was all unexpected. A heart so fragile, so delicate sitting in a corner and questioning herself "Why was I not wished?"

We still live in such a society where they worship goddesses and ask for a son. They teach their daughters to have ambitions, but not too much. To be successful, but not too much. Otherwise it would threaten the man. 

Because I am a female, I am expected to aspire to marry. I am expected to make life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy, love and mutual support but why don't  boys are taught the same? 

I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon a  woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.

Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.

I have heard a woman saying,"I know the difference between right and wrong. Right is when I do everything he tells me to. Wrong is when I question why. But every now and then a simple slap across the side of the head is a good way to remind me."

It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.

This is for girls who have the tendency to stay up at night listening to music that reminds them of their current situation. Who hide their fears, hurt, pain and tears under the smiles, laughs and giggles on a daily basis. The girls who wear their heart on their sleeve. The girls who pray that things will work out just once and they'll be satisfied. The girls who sceam and cry to their pillows because everyone else fails to listen. The girls who have so many secrets but wont tell a soul. The girls who have mistakes and regrets as a daily moral. The girls that never win. The girls that stay up all night thinking about that one boy and hoping that he'll notice her one day. The girls who take life as it comes, to the girls who are hoping that it'll get better somewhere down the road. For the girls who love with all their heart although it always gets broken. To girls who think it's over. To real girls, to all girls: You're beautiful. You just need to have your responsibility on your own.

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you...it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. 

Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions--predigested books and ideas...marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short...and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be "different"...The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.

Ladies..!!

Equality is not a concept. It's not something we should be striving for. It's a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now

To everyone reading this just give it a thought:-

Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.