Discrimination

I was born late in the afternoon on a Friday in april, in a suburb of Delhi. My grandmother (dad’s mom) who barely spoke hindi and had come from Assam to be there with mom during her delivery distributed sweets to the entire neighborhood. Though the largely Haryanvi and Punjabi neighbors found it hard to believe that anyone could be happy at the birth of a girl child.
Earlier grandma had stopped mom from going to her parents place for the delivery (as is the custom in most parts of the country). She insisted mom was a part of her family and therefore looking after both mom and the newborn was her job. She stayed with mom for three months, helping mom recover and then teaching her how to handle small children, their symptoms etc. You see I was my parent’s first child and mom had never handled a small child before. Three and a half years later my sister was born. My parents prayers for a healthy child was answered, the sex of the child had not been a part of those prayers.

Throughout our childhood we were never told that we couldn’t do a thing because we were girls. Even during summer vacations when we visited our cousins (all six boys) we were never reprimanded for following our cousins on their tree-climbing, kite-flying, cricket-playing, knee- scrapping escapades.
When I was growing up grandma told me ‘marry a Kashmiri’ (they are such handsome guys). We ourselves are Bengalis.

During my visit to our village home at the age of thirteen I found copies of the holy Koran, Bible, Guru Granth Sahib and books on the teachings of the Buddha apart from the Mahabharat, Ramayana and Gita in my grandma’s possession. Just to give you a background our village is a three hour journey from the nearest railhead. And granny was married of at the age of fifteen. She had lived in that village all her married life. At the age of forty five when her children were settled she undertook to travel to each and every part of the country alone.
After the death of her husband, people said they had seen his ghost walking around the village many times. She sat alone for three nights out in the open without a light. She said if my husband is visiting the earth after his death, he had better meet me.
My father died when I was fifteen, my mom who till then had been a housewife took it upon herself to run the family and refused help from relations who asked us to live with them. She said I don’t want my children growing up feeling like the poor, fatherless cousins of well-to-do people.

Why am I writing all this?
Because I just finished reading a post that speaks of gender discrimination in well-to-do educated families and it made me shudder.
Thank God for sending me to a family which is so different.