Posted:
@ Fifi: (gaassp) HOW did you guess?? 😊 Now WHAT could I POSSIBLY have said in the last year or so to have given that DARK secret away??
@ All else: the only very slim bright side of the current nonsensical misery is that the kind of conservative viewers who have always seen a woman as merely a zariya or conduit to heirs - with few rights of her own over that child - might possibly be encouraged to rethink their views. Childcare has, of course, always been primarily a mother's responsibility, and it is "acknowledged" that nobody can do a better job than she. (Which is to say: not many fathers really want to get into all those hassles, and most will admit with insouciance to a lack of patience that would be severely critiqued as "unnatural" or "selfish" in women.) The issue of rightful ownership of a child however - by mother as only surviving parent or by paternal grandparents as appropriately entitled blood family - is still one on which large numbers of rural or small town Indians may not judge in favour of the mother, even where the child is illegitimate, and especially when the father is no more. We must remember, as I never tire of saying, that educated and/or progressive people form a small minority of PR's huge audience.
C
