Laboni Saif:
If you are asked to guess why the picture below is alluding? Its just an unsheathed sky for most of the common eyes. But it could mean something more for a pair of eye full of dreams. It’s an empty canvas where these eyes sketches so many dreams, using the color of their imagination.
I am talking about those ethnic hearts among us who are unvoiced not only literally but also figuratively. Despite their rampant willingness to voice out, they remain reticent.Our society has designed the life of girls in such a way that even if they are free, they can’t feel themselves free. Abridgment is imposed upon them at their birth.
We though don’t practice female infanticide like some other countries, yet these imperceptible restrictions are no less than killing. It isn’t better to slaughter these girls in lieu of slaughtering their dreams, the dreams that they might be weaving from childhood.
Their long desired dreams are destroyed sometimes by the hand of none other than their own parents. After getting married they don’t even dare to utter any single word about their dreams before husband as they are warned by their parents. The situation is like this- apparently girls are born only to get married at an accurate age, produce babies and if the baby a is girl the process will continue.
Some parents around us send their daughters for higher education and invest so much for their private university costs ; quite surprising. They spread a positive vibe compelling us to think how concerned they are about their girls future. Though reality is shockingly different.
If such parents you find around you and it surprises you, then you should try to know more. It will leave you in shock when you will come to know that they are doing this only to get them a good future, which means a good marriage life with a richer and higher educated suitor.
Conjuring up Jane Austin’s novel “Emma”, the novel centers on the importance of marriage as one of life’s most important choice and greatest source of happiness, ”all the best blessings of existence” a phrase was used by the author. In her another novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’, it portrays the entire range of motives and reasons that distinguish the best marriages from mediocre matches. Our social belief of marriage is no less different than these novels.
The picture of another side of the society, if we look on, is not a bit different, where a mother is looking for a beautiful and educated bride for her higher educated son. She puts countless conditions to the person she seeks help from to get a good daughter-in-law.
Why don’t they make a robot according to their requirement instead of seeking a bride? Don’t they turn these girls lives into a real robot ? Doing the same routine activities everyday make them real robot. Household chores, making food, taking care of everybody else, bringing up children and so many duties are imposed upon them!
The question is, when their parents fail to bring about changes in their life what could they expect from in-laws that their life will be better after marriage? Even if they disclose the desire to come out of the routine maze, they are convinced by those so called educated husband in such way that they are unable to emulate with outside world.
People in the subcontinent live in 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st century simultaneously. On one hand we have many women in powerful positions in different fields- politics, corporate sector, film industry etc. On the other hand, in this part of the world, most of the women still fear to break the boundaries set by their families. They look surprisingly at those leading women and sketches their dreams in an empty canvas, though these dreams remain only dreams forever.
Why can’t we make a society where every girl will be privileged in equal way like boys. Why only boys will be privileged at birth only for being a boy? Why only a girl’s dreams will be forever dreams?
Men envisage their wives exist only to take care of them and their children and try their heart and soul to keep wives away from outside world. They use every chances to defame them at home whenever wives want to share their views about outer world. Don’t these highly educated men feel ashamed to live a conjugal life with that sort of ignorant wife? Or wives are only for showcasing to the society?
Thus, every girl put themselves in Nora’s position ( Doll’s House) where Nora moved out, leaving family and children behind. Whole life she served for them but when she asked herself what she achieved out of her sacrifice, she discovered herself empty.
” As Ibsen wrote,
HELMER: But this is disgraceful. Is this the way you neglect your most sacred duties?
NORA: What do you consider is my most sacred duty?
HELMER: Do I have to tell you that? Isn’t it your duty to your husband and children?
NORA:I have another duty, just as sacred.
HELMER: You can’t have. What duty do you mean?
NORA: My duty to myself
¨D Henrik Ibsen,
Every girl is considered as a doll both by their fathers and by their husbands. The time to change our outlook is arrived. Doll is merely a robot. How could anybody consider their beloved a robot?
Trying to realize girls by using little bit of introspection can change our outlook to a great extent. Not with a great deal of compassion but with a huge amount of love to fulfill girls dream can go a long way to resolving this social disparity. Thus, the traditional mindset of the society about girls will be changed.
Laboni Saif, lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Currently working as a teacher. She has completed graduation on English Literature from International Islamic University Chittagong. She writes poem, article and fiction both in Bengali and in English.