The well behaved bahu

I opened the paper on a lazy Sunday with a cup of tea and I’m flipping the pages and then suddenly this big bright advertisement all highlighted in a black border looks at me. It’s a matrimonial ad. An alliance is sought for a young girl and she is a well-behaved, educated, lucky religious and cultured and on top of it very beautiful. She will only respond to prospective grooms who are well-educated, handsome smart, well-behaved and cultured family. The keynote here is the similarity that the bride and groom are well behaved.

It made me laugh and made me sadder a bit more. The marriage mart certainly knows how to sell the bride and groom. Can you imagine the world has to come to selling a girl as she is lucky as her prospects are good for business and there is no fault in the stars (sorry hijacked shamelessly from the book)?  She is educated, that much I can understand as she has the requisite degree to teach the next generation of yuppie kids. She is religious, the epitome of cultured dignified beauty. What stumped me was well behaved; do they mean she is a docile girl?

Why has the world come to look for mindless, docile sheep like women who listen and follow to a T?  Just imagine the world has come to this that a girl is ‘sold’ to being well behaved to toe the line to her in-laws.

Does this mean she has no mind of her own? In a world that is increasingly getting vocal on women empowerment, a world where we want equal rights, where she can speak her mind. Every day in my school, I teach the girls to speak louder, with a confident voice to be heard across. Girls, tremble, don’t even know how to put across what they feel or say. And knowingly we again put them into this cycle where there voice shouldn’t be heard.

A world, that again wants women, to be seen and not heard. We need to seriously rethink , and change our mindset to encourage girls to speak defend themselves and not to quash and quell their voices.

We are not living in a world where we need women with a mute button. She needs to be seen, be heard as an equal partner. A well behaved person is someone who behaves in a manner that the speaker is correct . Are the boys , groom of today looking for cows or sacrificial lamb as life partners?

The particular advertisement has stayed with me and it again makes me wonder of the present scenario. I myself am not well behaved , what would I ask for my daughter in laws? I get it , I don’t need  a daughter who can think or voice an opinion or break out in a dance when the music gets to her , I need a sheep !  Oh ,this marriage business makes me laugh and cry at the same time. We bring up our girls, let them dream , educate them, show them that the world is theirs for the asking  and tell them anything is possible, and then comes the make a marriage moment and then she needs to revert back to being a  docile lamb , frightened , shy and well behaved led to the slaughter !

The slogan of the day is naayi sooch but that is just mere sloganeering !