Posted:
Today the biggest discussion in the forum is how Dev in his eagerness to please his mother Ishwari, let another mother down.
Few weeks ago (or is it month?) I made a post on Balance. I wrote how every relationship has its place and importance. When someone gives more importance to one, it starts to encroach in another relationship's space.
Dev always gave Ishwari the most space in his life. But that was how Ishwari intended. His every other relationship came filtered through her to the point that he saw what she made him see, he felt what she made him feel, he believed what she made him believe. He never questioned nor used his own thoughts to question why.
The result of this was isolation. Neha had Riya and Nikki to bond. But Dev had only Ishwari. He had no bond with anyone else. How could he? Ishwari blocked everyone else from him. As a result he didn't have friends either.
There is a problem with friends you see. They don't have blood ties with you so they don't have to hide their thoughts or pull their punches. If Dev as a child went to them and started his Mummy song, he would be laughed and teased the crap out of him by his friends. So Ishwari made sure his focus and devotion remained only on her, no one else.
Dev grew up and met Sona. For the first time in his life he had a friend. Sona says she was his best friend but it's not as if she had a competition in that matter.
Anyways, later that friendship turned into love.
Now every strong relationship has the foundation of friendship. So you'd think since Dev married his only friend, best or otherwise, he will have the strongest relationship.
But no. Regardless what anyone says, I am telling you as a woman who has been married for 5 years to her best friend, Dev and Sona doesn't have strong relationship. If anything, their relationship is extremely weak.
Why? Because their relationship doesn't have a foundation of friendship, it's foundation is a lie. A lie by omission is still a lie.
Now the question arises that why two friends who also love each other has to lie or hide from each other?
Dev thought that if he told Sona about her infertility, she would leave him. He with his own experience should know that they could not leave each other alone. Then why lie?
Because Dev has this desperate need to please everyone even if that means he will lie, threaten, make hasty promises he can't keep, as long as the person in front of him is temporarily happy, that's good enough and he doesn't care who he hurts in the process because family comes first and as Indian reality suggests a wife may be a lover who knows your body better than you know it yourself, she may be mother of your children who is continuing your family's legacy, she may be by your side when you are cripple with sickness but she is not family.
Because that's how society behaves with men and women.
Every mother tells her daughter when she is about to get married, "Treat your husband's family like your own and love them like us."
Why don't we tell our sons that?
Why do we expect a man to be loyal to his family, but a woman to shift her loyalty to her husband and his family the moment she gets married?
If a woman devotes herself to her husband's well being and happiness, she is pativrata and if a husband does the same, he is jodu ka ghulam?
If a woman stands up for her husband's honour against even her own family, she is a good wife.
If a husband does the same, he is a bad son?
Like Mamaji, I have a story too. It's from Mahabharata.
A woman had 5 husbands but they bet her in gambling treating her like a property. She was dishonoured, but they watched silently. Her best friend, Sakha, came to save her honour because that's what best friends do.
The result of that insult was destruction of the entire family.
Here the woman's best friend was not her husband. But just like friends he stood by her and protected her honour. Because a REAL man neither disrespects nor watches a woman's disrespect silently - be it his mother, sister, aunt, wife, friend, his domestic help or the woman selling her body at the street corner.
Dev does not respect women because Ishwari doesn't respect women. He treats women as if they are some empty headed dolls who he has to manage and take care of. He knows best what they need and it's his responsibility to provide for them what he thinks they need. Then they can show their appreciation with praise and adoration and in Sona's case in the bedroom.
Shocked? Don't be. A man who respects women doesn't stand and watch silently while his own wife is being insulted. And don't tell me he is showing respect to elders, he isn't.
If an elder disrespects someone and he stands and watch, he is participating in the insult.
If a husband doesn't make sure people know that his wife's insult is his insult, he is not respecting his relationship.
And if he conveniently ignore the snide comments that is thrown towards his wife because well, he is not being attacked, then he is not respecting his wife.
And a man who can't do justice to his commitment, should not make a commitment.
I have said it before and saying it again. A man who loves his mother and a Mamma's boy are not the same. A man who loves his mother, shows her successful parenting by respecting his wife and treating her family with respect because his mother raised him right and taught him how to treat women.
A Mamma's boy dances to his mother's command and either disrespected his wife and her family and/or keeps his mouth shut when his mother dishonours his wife and proves what a shitty job his mother did raising him.
That's the difference ladies. Bijoy is the former, Dev is the later. Marry the former, not the later.
I don't know if we are so used to seeing a woman getting insulted that it doesn't even register in our conscience that it's wrong or for some people a woman doesn't have dignity which makes us indifferent when we watch a woman being insulted.
Yet if anyone even questions a man's honour or raises a single question to his dignity, we are all over to defend and protect him.
It's about time, we women stop taking our or another women's respect for granted.
When a woman willingly goes to live with her husband's family, she is doing them a favour so that her husband can have everything without a single sacrifice at her own personal cost.
Yet people take that for granted because of handy tradition. Such a shame that even we, women take ourselves and each other for granted.
