During a recent family driving trip, when I was sitting in a dhaba flanked by my wife on one side and sister on the other, I proudly announced to my son and nephews that none of you have this privilege of sitting between the sister and wife. True! In our immediate and extended family, it's a boys world with only traces of a few girls here and there. Of course not by choice but only as a matter of destiny. In retrospective when our children were born, it wouldn't have mattered if it had been a girl or a boy. Recently when I mentioned to an ex-colleague of mine that our group miss her at the lunch table, she said “definitely you will as only a lady can bring the cohesion in the group”. She is right. Girls bring home a warmth compared to the ‘rebellion’ of the boys. Oops! no comparison between genders. Boys are boys and girls are girls. It is easy to say that a girl is equal to ten sons but for the society still considering a girl equivalent to a boy is tad difficult.
During a visit to my friend with one son, I asked whether he had a sister and he answered in the affirmative. To my question as to how does it feel leading a nuclear family with just one son, he said the compassion, empathy and caring unique to girls is what sometimes he misses in life. We probably need to teach our sons some feminine traits to cope up more happily with life. Today’s world doesn’t differentiate between girls and boys at least in education and professional life. What boys do girls definitely do, rather they do better than boys. They are multi-taskers. A teacher, a manager, a cricketer, an athlete and even an astronaut is a daughter or wife at home and mother to her children. Girls are rather carved out that way by mother nature. But a question that we need to ask ourselves is whether our boys are capable of doing everything the girls do ? During our childhood, boys were taught and sometimes made to do all household chores like cooking, washing and cleaning which I feel has helped make life in this busy city more manageable. While our children read about the contribution of the women achievers of today, the likes of Nirmala Sitaraman, Sushma Swaraj, Indira Nooyi, Kalpana Chawla, Mary Kom and others, let us educate them to appreciate and respect the contributions of Hira bai’s and Ganga bai’s who help simplify our daily life.
Once upon a time in my hometown, parents were known by the names of their children. There were Geetha’s mother, Uma’s mother, Krishna’s father et al. Today sometimes I feel I don’t experience the same pride being called Govind’s father that my father experienced being called “Rani’s Father”. btw Rani is my younger sister’s maiden name.
Sateesh
