Destination Dharamsaala!

     This is a day that I feel I have to write down, for reasons that words just can’t explain. I’m saying this at the risk of sounding too romantic, but what’s the harm in falling in love with life, falling in love with the world, but not falling in love with a guy?

     With all my stubborn determination to travel the world, inspite of my previous mini-travel experiences, I have finally landed in Dharamsaala as a true traveler, or so I hope. Walking around the street alone in the beginning felt a little lonely, but as the sun climbed up the sky, through the clouds drizzling rain on us, the day just got better and better, and I somehow know that one post on my blog is just not enough to describe it, you have to live it!

The Stupa at the Monastery that I am staying in

     It began with joining a volunteering organization that helps teach Tibetan refugees foreign languages. Had a conversation class with a bunch of chatty enthusiastic Tibetan sweethearts, right after meeting travelers from Israel, Finland, USA, Canada and Britain who came in to volunteer as well.

Getting lost on the mountains to find a library certainly helped me lose a few kilos. I did not find the library, but I did find another organization that I fell in love with and will be teaching English at. Met a retired teacher from Taiwan who travelled the world with her seven year old daughter, had probably the world’s best momo soup and walked back to the monastery that I stay in. (Yes! I am living in a real monastery that has monks walking around in their red robes)

     I could just go on about this one single day! (and I will). Had weird chocolate donuts in a wonderful café, reading a book about Buddhism, whose most striking phrase was “If you still call yourself a Buddhist then you aren’t a true Buddha yet.” and met my student who I am going to teach French.

   Then I ended up in a café called “Hope Café” where I watched a documentary about the atrocities committed against Tibetans in China, with a bunch of amazing travelers. A British traveler who spent a few days in a jail in Iran, an Irish woman teaching English in Thailand, an Australian who really was touched by the Tibetan issue and so many others made my day even more eventful as we enjoyed chocolate momos.

A Valley In Dharamsaala.

     I can really go on about how amazing my day was, or how amazing Dharamsaala is or even how amazing chocolate momos are, but that would just be a little teenage girl writing in her personal diary. Whereas I have had an epiphany today, that didn't come as a surprise to me. The experiences that I have had, the memories that I have made and certainly the friends that I have earned, in just the past 24 hours travelling in a exotic unknown destination, have given me so much more than the past twenty years of my ‘settled’ life at ‘home’!

     Just one day, and I am all revved up to experience the world. Why not? It is our only home after all, with just so much to offer to us isn't it? A little pause to big travels dreams, as I have to receive my mom’s phone call from ‘home’, as she calls me all worried about me being alone and not being in the comforts of her cooking. 

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Gender Discrimination with an Education - Why I make a horrible Indian Wife

     Brilliant music, Brilliant drive and a Brilliant friend to have an engaging chat with. Just a few minutes before this drive home with my friend, he had happened to introduce me to this crush. A very sweet and homely girl, who would obviously make a wonderful Indian wife. We were discussing about his future with this very sweet and homely girl, if they were to start a relationship together.What could possibly be flawed in this setting of two friends having a normal chat?

     A friend of mine always tells me I think in "two layers". I see what most people don't see(maybe choose not to see) or rather I read between the lines. I assume this is not so acceptable by most, but it is this "two layered" thinking that helps me write my blog.
     I could already see her making his family happy with her cooking, and her treatment of the in-laws. She would make a good Indian Wife and a good Indian Bride (The idea of the role of wife that my country holds may not be in agreement with what idea I hold). I could see why my friend likes her, and he seconded that idea too. A perfect match about to happen... Wait! My "two layered" thinking has yet to come to play here.
     In spite of her perfect representation of the bharatiya naari (Indian Woman), that our 'tradition', 'culture' and our 'history' teaches us day-in and day-out, we both noticed and agreed that they had nothing in common at all. Two months of talking and they would run out of engaging conversations for the rest of their happily married life(My friend might be looking for a gun to shoot me right now for writing this blog post. But I'm a risk taker ;P )
     So I inconspicuously asked, "Se might make your family happy, but it is still you who has to spend the rest of your life with her. So shouldn't you marry a girl you would really want to spend that life with?"
     I got an explanation as to why that would be close to impossible from my friend, that I wasn't really surprised at hearing. He went on to say if he were to ever introduce a girl like me, with whom he more in common to his mother and say he wants to marry me, his family would be devastated and in ruins, and his mother would eventually make him choose between me and her (There is a slight level of exaggeration, but you should get the idea that I would not be accepted as an Indian Bride in his Indian Family).
     That was obvious. Let me take the effort of explaining to you why marrying me is such a taboo.

• I do not know how to cook, and I will not put in the extra effort to learn cooking just because all my aunties and mother's friends tell me I need it to please my husband and in-laws with my cooking. They are grown people, they should either feed themselves or hire a cook. I am not going to be their servant.
• I will not give up my education or my career or my dreams according to the family that I marry into, because they believe a woman has to take care of the family while the man and the elders make the big decisions in the house. I have always been and will always be an independent woman who makes her own decisions. 
• I am spiritual, which means I am not religious. So a typical Indian wedding with rituals whose meanings literally nobody knows, is not something I will be a part of.
• I will not change my second name to my husband's second name, or any such changes that will show that I am only a wife and nothing else.
• I will not... I repeat I will not jump into a fire like Sita did to prove how good a wife she was to Lord Rama(A reference to the Indian holy book called the bhagavadgita). If my husband can't trust me, he has some issues!

     Now that I started listing out the reasons, I realise there are so many more that make me a horrible Indian Bride! But, I think I will run the risk of never finding an Indian Husband, if it means I get to be independent, make my own decisions, live my dreams and most of all BE TREATED EQUALLY in spite of my gender.  

     Our gender bias and our concept of roles of the genders is so deeply rooted in our culture and society, that this kind of gender discrimination goes entirely unnoticed. Most people do not even see how wrong and discriminative this practice of defining a perfect Indian Bride is! Good cook, Good looking, Fair, Doesn't have male-friends, Chaste, Good at taking orders, Doesn't drink or smoke, possibly gives a good massage, etc etc etc etc etc... I feel like we Indian women are up for sale. If you do not fit that description, or fight against the existence on such descriptions then you are flawed, you are unmarry-able.

     Education hasn't helped this scenario either. The only difference it has made is that now the Indian Wife is expected to cook, clean, please her husband and her in-laws, and in addition also earn a part of the income. How has the society really changed if independent women will find it so hard to be accepted into an Indian Family as a Bride?

     Being a sweet and homely wife is not something I am undermining. I know how hard and wonderful a job it is to be a wife and a mother. But shouldn't this choice be entirely upto the woman herself, and not anybody else. If a woman like me chooses a different life that our 'tradition' and 'culture' doesn't preach, then do I make a horrible wife?

     If an Indian Family rejects me as a Good Indian Bride only because I wish to be treated equally and with respect, and want to exercise my rights and freedom, then I am happy! In fact I am proud of standing up for this half of humanity. I in turn reject them, reject them all from our society! 

     My friendship with my friend is something I will always cherish. Our shared interests and our brilliant chats. I respect him with all my heart and believe truly in his talent and worth. Hence I wish none of my opinions are taken as personal. But I am an Indian woman fighting for a society that treats women equally and gives us a status and respect we deserve. Long way to go, but the fight has to start somewhere right?

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