There was once a girl, an only child, surrounded with love growing up. She had a maid to wait on her, went to private school and was the center of her mother’s universe. When the girl was young, too young, still a teenager, “a suitable match” was conjured and she was sent to her husband’s house to be a dutiful wife, daughter-in-law and mother. She entered the roles with wide-eyed anticipation. She was shy and smiled beneath the red dupatta, or large scarf used to drape the head, that she had to wear as an Indian bride. She didn’t know that she would be treated worse than the maids. She didn’t know she would be cursed at, starved and made to dress in tatters. She didn’t know that she would give birth to three beautiful girls in quick succession. Her inability to have a boy, a prized asset in Indian society, would only worsen her situation.
Relatives intervened and asked her to walk out of the marriage. She looked at the floor and shook her head “no,” ever so slightly. She wouldn’t be allowed to take her daughters. She was not educated enough to get a job. She couldn’t support herself, much less them. So she would not leave. Not without her daughters.
The relatives clucked their tongues and allowed her to return to the living hell. Drawing their index finger across their forehead in a continuous horizontal motion, “It is her naseeb,” they said. With those four words, the girl’s fate was sealed.
There was once another girl whose mother didn’t know better. In an attempt to raise her child as a “modern” woman, she overstepped the line and transformed her attractive daughter into the city’s party girl. When it was time for her to be married, no one wanted the girl for a wife or daughter-in-law. So she got stuck with some lowlife who couldn’t hold a job and drank excessively. After years of suffering brutal beatings, the girl filed for divorce. Enrolled in school and working alongside, the girl is struggling to get her life back.
Once again, people clucked their tongues, some with pity, others with sympathy, a rare few with empathy and most others with condescension or disgust. Once again, the index finger was drawn across the forehead in a continuous horizontal motion and the words, “It is her naseeb,” were uttered.
There was a third girl who was raised without rules. She listened to no one, not even her parents. She had no curfew, no chores, no limits. Not surprisingly, she grew up a wild child. When the world expected her to settle into a more docile, domestic role, it came as a surprise to everyone that she rebelled. She fought with her husband and left the marital home in a huff. Today, she is a 40-year-old single woman still living with her parents. Still financially dependent on her parents. “It is her naseeb,” say many who know her story.
Naseeb, in the Indian social context, is a word used to refer to a person’s destiny. The act of drawing an index finger across the forehead while using the term is symbolic of the belief that a person’s fate is invisibly written across their forehead. This fate has been decided since the day they were born. Life circumstances are preordained. The stars are aligned for a life to progress in a fixed path. In other words, a person has little control over their own life. A person is a passive passenger, along for the ride.
While the term is used for boys on occasion, it is usually reserved for girls. The reason they aren’t happy in their marital homes, the reason a girl of marriageable age isn’t being approached by prospective suitors to the more bizarre reasons of why a girl may have committed suicide or been the victim of an acid attack at the hands of a spurned lover, is usually attributed to naseeb. It was her fate. It was meant to happen. It was written in the stars. No further explanation is necessary.
Call me an iconoclast, but I beg to differ. These three stories could be anyone’s stories. Growing up, many of us have heard of the cousin who went astray, married the quintessential “bad boy” and was miserable, instead of settling into marital bliss with the match her parents had in mind. Or of the honor role student who got into “bad company,” let her grades slip, started doing drugs and drank away her shining future. The girl down the street who got pregnant at 16 years old, dropped out of school and lives off of welfare.
But to blame any of the above examples on destiny or fate is being sheer lazy. Taking the easy way out. That’s not to say there is no such thing as destiny or fate. Of course, there is. But to say that a person’s life depends solely on either, is ___. You fill in the expletive.
Getting down to the basics, a girl needs a support system. So often, women are expected to set aside their feelings to become the framework holding someone else up. Their parents, their husband, their children. For a woman to thrive, she needs a safety net. People she can turn to if she has a problem, if she needs advice, someone to tell her she’s loved. Women are strong. But validation from those that count make them stronger.
A girl needs tools to survive in the world. She needs an education. A platform to test the knowledge. The opportunity to develop ideas and a questioning spirit.
This contributes to empowering a woman. To make her own decisions – choosing a career, choosing to use contraception, choosing to get a hysterectomy. A woman needs a voice, a voice that gets heard. A voice that supports her right to vote, her right to a safe and fair workplace. And a voice against dowry harassment, female infanticide and marital rape.
A woman needs room to grow into the woman she can become.
Otherwise, it is like expecting a star athlete who has been injured to win a competition without treatment. Expecting to get accepted to a premier school without studying for the entrance test. Expecting a car to be eligible for accident coverage without paying the monthly insurance premium. Without empowerment, a person, any person, is destined for doom.
Let’s be clear that empowerment does not translate to being a “man-hater.” Empowerment means to join the struggle of women everywhere to discover their place under the sun, alongside men.
Because that is the beginning of progress. The birth of the hope of greater equality. And the first step toward a woman’s renewed chance to write her own future.
Pic Source: Deviant Art
The Author Ayesha Aleem is a writer, blogger and self-confessed gourmand. She loves writing and people, so she opted for a career in journalism. After a liberal arts degree from Mount Carmel College, Bangalore, Ayesha is currently finishing a master's degree at Boston University. She loves being a woman but has been fortunate to have some great men in her life too. So she prefers being called a "humanist" rather than a "feminist." She dreams of writing a book and having her own restaurant one day. Visit her blog Confessions of a Diva.
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[...] August 14, 2009 · Leave a Comment Will the world ever stop resigning women to life’s circumstances and making excuses to justify their misfortunes? I wonder out loud in this story. [...]