Open Letter - 13

Dear Society,

How are you doing? I am fine and I hope this letter finds you hale and healthy. I am in no mood to write a letter today, but I could not abstain myself from asking you one question that kept intriguing me all along last week.

It all started with a tussle between a mother and her young daughter next door. Ours being a closely knit community, I could overhear their discussion right from my living room. The fight was all about one small Bindi that the girl finds disturbing to use and her mother finds unthinkable to avoid.

As their argument prolonged, so did my train of thoughts. Our girls are trained right from an early age to grow their hair long, to project a Bindi on their forehead, to pierce their ears, to cover their breasts and to hide their knees. Among a list of mandated items are bangles, rings (for fingers, ears, nose), chain, anklets and if married twice the number of standards. I have quite a number of times raised an argument about the necessity to get bedecked all the time and every argument of mine was silenced by a, “It’s all for your own good”, statement.

A Bindi, apparently, opens up an eye of wisdom when placed at the conjunction of the eyebrows a bit high into the forehead.  Kajal, supposedly prevents exposure to eye infections. Ear rings prevent their wearer from going deaf. Bangles help improve blood circulation while toe rings interestingly are good for heart. All these ornaments, apparently, work as tools of acupuncture and thus support the health of their owners. I never fail to marvel at the genius of our people. They might not have told us that they are talking science but they did indirectly introduce science into our very lives through these traditions and customs!

One thing that always troubles my not-so-clever mind though is the special status that women enjoy when it comes to these so called acupuncture tools. If these practices are so good to the well-being of a woman, then why aren’t they followed by men? Why don’t they try to open their eyes of wisdom with a red dot on their foreheads? Or is it that the absence of the red-dot made them ignorant of the eye of wisdom?

Why don’t they augment their blood circulation with bangles and why don’t they protect their eyes with Kajal? I see no reason for men to avoid great practices as these that keep women hale and healthy throughout their lifetime. We are definitely not hiding our wisdom! May be, they do know that mere colour, metal and soot makes no difference to one’s health. Either men must be foolish enough to ignore the clever practices of women or they must be wise enough to roughly brush aside all the illogical customs of past that women still cling on to.

Dear society. What do you say? Who among us is the wisest? Men? Or women? Do write to me about your stand on this matter. Because, by the time my child enters this world, I need to know if I should get my child chained to these customs or not.

I shall be eagerly waiting for your reply.

Yours sincerely,

An Expecting Mother.