Celebrated author Chetan Bhagat’s article saying that Indian women should not take too much stress is doing the rounds on what’s app. What I liked is the fact that an author being a man could sense the reasons, that gives stress to women.
I cannot say about other countries, as I have never lived for long anywhere else, but in India a woman is given a secondary treatment. Imagine, in India we worship goddesses- Lakshmi for wealth, Saraswati for knowledge and Durga for destroying all evil, but when it comes to treating our women with respect the society just lacks it.
You may travel anywhere in the country, come across different sections of the society, one thing you will see is the expectations everybody has from a woman. She may be a mother,wife, daughter or daughter-in-law, she is expected to dress, talk and interact in a particular manner. The expectations may differ and vary from family to family and society to society.
I have seen girls living life as per the wishes of their parents and spouses for years together. It’s only after years of living that life, they realise that the people for whom they sacrificed their dreams and aspirations do not even care for them, I have seen a woman who has given up her career and aspirations to be a full time mother, but when the same children grow they do not even bother about the emotion a mother goes through. A mother is expected to look after her children but these expectations are not from a father. A father is said to be good if he can just take care of the financial needs of his children. Here too, if the child gets spoilt mother is blamed but if the child does very well, father takes the credit.
Also, what’s seen is that a daughter-in-law is expected to look after her ailing inlaws, why are such expectations not from a son-in-law? If she ignores her inlaws she is not a good person but then if the son-in-law is ignorant towards the health of his inlaws, people say that he is a busy man.
A highly qualified wife does take a back seat to be with her husband and leaves her job to be with him, but very rarely will one see a husband doing the same.
There are many such examples which show that the expectations are much more from a woman than a man, women know this and try to fulfil them. The reality is – it’s not that easy, as a result they feel stressed and also unhappy.
We do come across many women who are smiling and seem to be happy. Only when you get to know them more that you realise how sad they actually are. The sad and unhappy feeling is because of the life they are leading, the life where they have always kept their wants and needs aside, a life where they always thought about oth er’s happinessand not their own, a life that they are even scared to dream, and a life in which they were always told what’s to be done.
These are the women who try to find happiness in other things, little do they know that the only person who can make them happy is themselves. So, I think it’s high time we do things not only for others. Here I also mean your husband, kids, in laws, you have always been trying to make them happy, be it cooking their favourite dish, vacationing to their choice of location, buying their choice of car, house, dining in their choice of restaurant to watching their choice of movie. Where is your choice in all the things you do as a family? Try to do that. Try doing things for yourself, all this while you have been doing things to make them happy with out them even realising that in the process you are unhappy.
Do things which will make you happy as you are the only one responsible for your happiness.