Saturday, January 17, 2009

Mangal sutra: The license to have sex.

Once, on my home, I took the usual bus out of Rasayani to Panvel. While getting into the bus, I nearly bumped into the woman standing in front of me. I managed to control myself and at the same instant I realized that she was pregnant. I found a seat for myself and my friend. The pregnant lady sat down on the seat next to ours in the other row. I casually looked at her face and was left dumb-founded. She was evidently 2-3 years my junior. I was 19 at that point of time. I asked my friend if she felt the same. She replied in the positive. The girl could not have been more than 17 and yet she was on her way to motherhood. I felt disgusted at that moment. This child had been decorated in gold jewelry in a manner that reminded me of decorated bulls during the Maharashtrian harvest festival of Bail-Pola, when we worship our cattle. Her attire made her look older but her face gave away the truth. At the age of 17, I was caught up with my class 12 examinations, where as this girl was forced into producing a baby, hence teenage sex and teenage pregnancy, all under the pretext of matrimony. Such a disgusting and dangerous thing to do! We urban youngsters get accused of aping western culture and values which supposedly ruin Indian culture while our rural teenage counterparts are encouraged to get screwed up with the blessing of their whole families, societal approval, under the guise of good culture and in the name of marriage. How cool is that? There was a time when I believed that teenage pregnancies in India were the only the stories of those deserted, orphaned girl children on the streets who had no families to keep them safe and would hence fall prey to rapists; Or maybe those God-forsaken members of the fairer sex who had been cursed into human trafficking at a very tender age. But my years in Rasayani, Panvel jolted me out of my asinine assumptions and ignorance. In India , you are free to have sex and churn out babies if you have mangal sutra dangling down your neck, irrespective of you age and maturity.


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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I was reading ur blog posts and found some of them to be very good.. u write well.. Why don't you popularize it more.. ur posts on ur blog ‘MY MUSINGS ON THE WORLD AROUND’ took my particular attention as some of them are interesting topics of mine too;

BTW I help out some ex-IIMA guys who with another batch mate run www.rambhai.com where you can post links to your most loved blog-posts. Rambhai was the chaiwala at IIMA and it is a site where users can themselves share links to blog posts etc and other can find and vote on them. The best make it to the homepage!

This way you can reach out to rambhai readers some of whom could become your ardent fans.. who knows.. :)

Cheers,
Ray

^RoOhAnI^ said...

I've heard about this kind of thing before. It's such a pity that our own Indian culture ENCOURAGES a woman into these things and later blames it on the ''western'' culture when opposed.
Good post there. :)

Natalia said...

Hi Ray! Thanks for telling me about Rambhai.com. I have joined the site and I am conversing with many fellow bloggers already! Thanks for putting RAMBHAI on my map.

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An infectiously enthusiastic incorrigible optimist, insanely in love with and morbidly curious about life, death and everything in between.