by Syed Asma
I am born in a family full of daughters.We are five sisters and have no brother. On hearing this, people usually sympathize and say, “Oh! You don’t have a brother?” And in the same breath, they continuecasually, with a frown,“in today’s time there is no difference between a girl and a boy.” Anyway, we can’t interfere in the Creator’s business.And it is kind of okay, we never felt the void.
So, I am brought up in a kind of the world where I could never face the discrimination of being a girl, as my friends or acquaintances complained in school and college.
But the discrimination exists and I realized it when I moved out of my home.
There are diverse fronts on which the ‘discrimination’ can be justified; I will try to pick up a single thread and raise questions. I would have loved to write a comment but that ideally needs reasons and explanation which I don’t have.
My query is when a divorcee or a widow goes out to look for a second match, why is she asked to surrender her children?
The interesting reason that the new husbands put forward is “if she has her own children along, she won’t take my children seriously?”
What kind of stupid logic is it?
And the best part of it is a norm in the society- the fateful childrenare left with their maternal grandparents.
If a woman desires to get married she has to leave her children. What kind of inhuman characterof our society does it talk about?
In this male chauvinist society a woman can’t question the existence of her new husband’s children. She has to be a sharam daar koor and accept whatever comes her way.
Oh, yes! She is a woman and is supposed to sacrifice.
