ShradhaGiriblogs

I am so looking forward to this Dasain. It is that time of the year when I visit my maiti (paternal home) and all my lost siblings are under the same roof in the same house that we all grew up in. I usually start the process of booking our tickets a month before and come to think of it only a month left for Dasain holidays. I am super excited to meet my brothers and sisters because we make sure we have lots of fun drinking and eating khasi ko masu which of course is the only thing we literally binge on. One of my brothers loves haryo kerau (fresh green peas) so he is always shopping for it. My older brother is an expert in choosing the best pieces of meat for barbeque. We sit around the table, some chopping meat, while others busy prepping the table and fixing our drinks. My sisters and sisters in laws serve making sure everyone gets the best of everything and suddenly one of my brother’s pass on a nice piece of meat that I like saying "give this to kanchi". You guessed it

Recently I read an article written by an Indian woman on how she forgot to raise her son well while she paid particular attention to raising her daughter to be an equal citizen. When we talk about gender equality we often focus on girls. How we should raise them - encourage them to fight for their right; admit them to the best schools; never tell them ‘they can’t do it’ and raise their expectations rather too high. I am a mother to a six year old girl and I often cringe every time I tell her – she can do anything if she wants. While we focus too much on raising our girl’s right we forget to pay attention to our sons.  I lived all my life in a boarding school, the first ten years in an all-girls school. Life wasn’t smooth. We felt foreign to the other gender. We giggled and burst out crazy if a boy approached us. We acted nonsensical at times. We didn’t know how or what they were. They were exclusive – all we saw was the other gender – foreign - boys. We lived in our own bubbl