Women are not in the receiving end, our culture is!

I am having a bad time with some of my female bloggers. If I show up to them, they will probably kill me. Anyways let me shoo my embarassment aside and let you know the interesting discussion.

I found this interesting and very well written blog by someone who calls herself 'Desi Girl'. You should definitely read the comments... berrate me or support me.

Attaching my last comment, which kind of defined my objective in all this mess.

OK peace! Throwing my white sqeaky clean towel into the ring! I washed it myself.

You know, the day I returned from my engagement, what was the first comment I got after a few formal congratulations. “Dude, thats not a engagement ring, that suffer-ing” With that statement and by being engaged, I entered into this cycle of wife bashing. I was completely taken aback and in a few days began seriously wondering, why these people have got married in the first place?

The reason I quoted this experience was to just prove that there are enough guys (looks almost like a majority) who think things are bad for a man in a marriage as well. This is sort of an answer to Malabika’s statement about “why are things bad for women at all?”

Life is unfair and things are bad for everyone, if you look at it that way.

Today if I start a blog dealing with ‘Man’s suffering because of his marriage’, and provided I am writer of IHM or Desi Girl’s callibre, believe me, I can have a good follower base… with all kinds of jingoist comments against wives, ..

We all know that relationships are difficult. Why do we say, “Shaadi ka laddoo jo khaye… “, “Shaadi Barbadi” etc etc along with the hazaar jokes about marriage? Similarly we have thousands of jokes around Saas, Bahu? Also, I had this “one room philosophy” which basically meant that the best of friends will also fight the moment they stay under one roof, irrespective of gender.

The point what I feel very strongly is that we should not fan this fire by giving one sided point of views. We are educated resourceful guys having a balanced view on life. Can we survive by rebelling against the other gender or our mothers (own or in-law) from a norm point of view?
These kinds of propagation is delaying marriagable age, breaking families, increasing divorces, confusing kids, and leaving our parents support-less. Today relationships are becoming more & more difficult… Our patience and perseverance are at an all time low. I feel, we are not propagating the right attitude and spirit by such venom-filled posts against a custom without giving an alternative worth the salt.

And nuclear individualistic lifestyle is definitely not the alternative. Even economically, nuclear family is disastrous. It eats away national savings without the motivation to save for the family.

Do we want to have homes for elders like we have in US, or like we have creche today in Mumbai? I do not want to leave my kid in a creche even it means reducing my income to half. Do you want the abortion rates that we have in US? Do you want ‘Juno’s’ to be omni-present in our society?

Have you read ‘its not about the bike’ by Armstrong? He didnt know his father and his mother was 18 years old when he was born.. Imagine why he cycled everyday for hours… Impressively, he used his frustrations in a productive way.

We may not. Our sons may not.

Have you guys read, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray and Love and then Commitment? She is the apostle of individualism and nuclear family. Just read how confused she was from the age of 17. How she was handling relationships? How she had to resort to medications? Luckily, she is a gifted writer and had the intelligence and the money to live through her crisis (and earn from it also).

We may not. Our daughters may not.

We have to devise a way to live with our families in a constructive way. We have to be team players, family men and women.

Cheers everyone. Peace.
We are in the same boat, brothers and sisters.
May God bless.