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Open Letter - 14

Dear Society,

How was your week? I had a week full of virtual games and video calls with family, near and far, friends, close, best, good and those that had to introduce themselves once again. Out of many good things that came out of this crisis, one aspect is getting together with near and dear. With literally more than half of the world going into rest mode time for niceties has rebounded. The amount of data traffic (and data pollution) we caused is another issue though. For once, let us not speak about the cons of it. I am writing this letter to narrate you the story of a lockdown wedding.

Three months back, it might have sounded crazy, but now that the situation demands, these kinds of weddings might turn out to be the new normal. The wedding took place with not more than ten attendants including the bride and the groom. Though it sounds so depressing, the situation in reality was not so pathetic as there were nearly two thousand virtual viewers to the celebration. One live telecast and not one of the invitees could miss their grand wedding! We were all glued to our laptop screens.

The bride was bedecked in her choicest ornaments and the groom dressed suitably. Chitter chatter took place along chat pane while secret gossips ran through personal chats. It was a wedding lacking nothing albeit live attendance. Trust me, these virtual weddings seemed so practical and economic compared to our actual flamboyant weddings. Food was ordered to each invitee right to their doorstep and gifts were all received online.

As the wedding proceeded one statement kept repeating in the chat box. “The bride looks so beautiful!”, they kept saying. Even I was spellbound by her beauty. Never had I realised she looks so beautiful. The make-up must have been perfect owing to availability of limitless free time for that. As I sat gaping at the bride, my hand involuntarily touched my womb. May be I shall give birth to such a beautiful daughter! I kept wondering if I can do anything to help my daughter look as beautiful as the bride. For a while I was lost in the thought but it took me not more than few minutes to wake out of it.

Beauty? Why am I of all things about the bride thinking about her beauty? Wouldn’t a not- so-beautiful girl make an admirable bride? For that matter, wouldn’t a not-so-beautiful girl make anything great in her life? Why are we always obsessed of pairing beauty with girls? Why are we teaching them to enhance their beauty with every passing day through means either natural or artificial?

I asked the same question to a cousin of mine and he said because it is always pleasing to look at beautiful girls. Moreover, beauty and good looks apparently boost the confidence of girls. His answer seemed convincing for a while but the next minute I had the obvious question in mind. If beauty boosts one’s confidence, then why is that men look more confident than women while women are more obsessed with beauty than men? Are men so naturally confident enough that they do not need any beauty boosters?

Dear society, have you ever realised how difficult it might be for girls to grow and shave their hairs when, where and how you find impressive? Girls are walking an extra mile to put beauty before health and thus harming their most sensitive organs with chemicals not suitable even to exterior skin. As thoughts of excessive face bleaches and shaved undergrowth came reeling back to my mind, realisation dawned upon my clouded mind bright like a sunrise on a monsoon sky.

That moment, I felt determined that have I to give birth to a girl, I shall not tell her to look beautiful to please the world. Because the moment I tell her that, the world shall stop looking beautiful to her eyes as beauty lies not in perfection but in acceptance.

Dear society, hope you pass this message on to all your innocent girls, loving mother and wise women so that by the time my child enters this world, there would be none hoping to find a fair and lovely child by my side.

Thanking you in advance,

Yours sincerely,

An Expecting Mother.  


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