Shristi Katwal

I was one of the privileged children. When I look back at my early days, I have no regrets at being a girl. My childhood was explicitly filled with joys. With the gradual transition to adolescence came the flurry of dos and don’ts. “You are a girl, act like one!”

Sick of being imposed “values” at every step and always afraid to trespass the threshold of social boundaries, I still went placidly about my ways amid all the admonishing. I used to ponder if we urban girls with relatively good educational background felt the pangs of social discrimination, what might have been the plight of girls in the villages, those without access to education?

But before my confusions were cleared up, the fact that the society considered women a second class citizen, a member of the weaker sex, as I was referred directly or indirectly, came as a bitter reality.

With all these, I felt I was being strangulated. No sooner had I adapted to what I thought was right for me to do, life had another surprise in store for me. A new world awaited me with its own territory, laws and norms, which I would had to stick to. This meant not only switching homestead but also changing my second name — my identity. Wedding, that is.

Does the change in my name necessitate a change in my persona? Despite all the household chores and family welfare, I later find myself fighting to tackle the problems of self-unawareness. Why am I so insipid? Though I claim to have everything, something is still amiss. What is that missing spark in my life? And one fine day, my man announces that his sheer interests in me have simply faded away. This was the last thing I deserved. After all I had devoted all my life to him and the family.

Well, I now feel I lost my youth thinking about how to please others, when I could have dropped some tricks down my sleeves to make others please me.

Why do women always have to make adjustments? Why do women become such “prisoners of conscience?” How sane is it to believe that a man of her dreams can fill her life with happiness, when he too is just another puppet?

This is not to belittle anybody. There are so many women out there who have lost their identity. Let us inculcate a good behaviour in us, set trends and break the cocoons to confront the odds and see for ourselves what the world has in store for us. Light exists in the midst of darkness; truth in the midst of falsehood. We too can make our lives worthy and leave behind footprints on the sands of time.