Girls' Plight

http://read-nishant.blogspot.com/2008/02/guys-plight.html

The author of the above article i thought has raised a very critical issue, which is constantly biting our hypocrytic, yet developing society.

I would like to scrutinize the issue that he has mentioned a little further.


In the above said situation the affected/involved parties are three in number; and it is very important to understand the psychology & repercussions of the situation on each of the three.

First is the guy, whom the above author has very conclusively adjudged as the one suffering the plight. Though I honestly believe that the other two parties are the ones that are more touched by the situation: the girl(Payal in this case) & the parents of the guy.

Looking at the guy's situation first & foremost:

Love vs. Reality: This guys seems to be someone who has probably missed out on the reality of a 'conservative family background', when he fell in love with Payal & began to go around with her. Well if conservatism is not something that can fully explain this (considering that is developing India), then i have another terminology that can be more explicable of what the guy failed to assess and i.e. his 'egoistic parents' ( I will elaborate on this when I come to the parents' part of this analysis). So point number one is that guys who end up in situations like this one, probably lose track of their reality or maybe misjudge it. One typical problem that I have noticed about guys in relationships is that they often lack foresight, they are never able to foresee what they are getting into or where they shall be heading towards in the medium-term or may be long-term( like in this case). When they fall in love, they are soaked solely in love, not realising that apart from loving their sweetheart they need to multitask and assess that they may never be able to fructify the situation into anything meaningful altogether. This problem is very rampant with the male gender, and with the live for moment attitude of the newer generation this attitude is quite often seen with the fairer sex too. But only if the newer generation turns heed to the old virtues of planning & preparing can situations of the like be avoided.

Strength of love vs. Weakness of the individual: Guys in our modern society are facing a decline in the rate of growth of their strength. While on the other hand, girls are showing a rapid growth rate in terms of developing strength. You know what I mean, I mean that though women in today's time arent as strong in upholding their views as men are, they are showing a rapid increase in the growth rate of ability to stand up for things. And inspite of the head start that our patriarchical society has given men on expressing & upholding their views, women are catching up soon. Also attributed to this rapid growth rate in strength development of women, the mood in the female sect is upbeat, while for men the declining growth rate suggests a mood of recession owing to which a guys are often not able to gather the courage to fight out for things they strongly believe they want. So even though the guy has the heart to fall in love, he may lack the heart to fight out for it. Or so to say, when it is you sweetheart on one hand and your beloved parents on the other. Its always easy to say 'sorry' to the sweetheart & break her heart, than rebel against parents & hurt them for a life time. The results of situations like this often go to prove that adage, 'blood is thicker than water'. And it takes lot of strength & attitude to fight what old adages suggest with reference to societal norms. And of course, a community(the male gender sect) which is weakening day by day & is going through the low of the recession, expecting an exhibition of strength of the order of rebelling against parents would be like asking for too much.

As a result of his misjudgement of getting into a relationship which could never fructify, & his inability to gather the strength to fight it out, he may never be able to fulfill his desire to marry the woman he desires to.

Now coming to the parents of the guy:

Peer pressure: We in India often talk about the ever increasing population & the competition it induces amonst individuals in the society. This competition takes various facets, from creating a healthy competition to a mere rat-race; what is interesting to see here is that while we talk about our generation bearing the brunt of this competition; our previous generation doesnt remain untouched. Parenthood as an arena of competition is as much an arena as is any JEE or CAT. While a lot of parents transalate their children's success in these arena to success of their parenthood, the highlight that emerges is that Indian Parents in todays times are under immense pressure to prove to their peers how sincerely & intently they have reared their kids. In the process of trying to be the best amongst peer group, parents dont hesitate from dictating their children into chosing a line of career, or an institution of education, or the eventual job & sometimes altogether the path of career. With female children getting equal encouragement from their backgrounds, the competition in parents' peer group has rocketed several folds. As a result of all this, many parents just dont want to risk their child's fture by putting it in his/her own hands. Also the child following parents' directions in terms of what he does in life makes the parents look good in society- it just proves that the child has good sanskaram to follow his/her parents' will. The risk involved with children taking their own decision combined with the unsankared syndrome motivates parents to reject what the child proposes he desires to do.

Parental Ego: To all this, I would also like to add the angle of what i call the 'egoistic parent'. In the case mentioned by the author above, had the guy's mother accepted the guy's idea of marrying Payal, what is the answer that she would have given Mrs. Tiwari who offered the proposal of a gem-like girl. Ofcourse she would have to tell her that her son has chosen someone on his own. Now to do that a lot of parents would have to take a hit on their ego. confessing that your son is taking his own decision means that you arent playing enough role in your son's life. Which eventually transalates into the credit of his successes also going solely to him. No matter how much of a 'developing nation' we may be, our society hasnt attained the maturity to accept that the child's success can be attributed solely to him/her!!

Insecurity: I dont know about both parents, but mothers in general like to have control of their son. Infact not only mothers, women in general like t have control of men in their life. And easiest prey to such a control is your own son. Losing control on your son is very hard to cope up for a woman. This is also another reason why a mother may never permit her son to choose a girl of his choice; because popular beliefs suggest that a girl of the guy's choice usually gets an upperhand in his priority of attention scheme. Now thats quite a popular belief of our society, and believe me these popular beliefs though extremely baseless, are so subtly ingrained in us(and especially mothers) that any deviation from them is like inviting too much risk, which mothers are just not willing to take.

As a result of the peer pressure in parents' arena, parents' ego & the mothers' insecurities; the parents blackmail the son into chosing between the desired sweetheart & themselves. The choice is obvious, because after all 'blood is thicker than water'. And it takes a lot to shake the societal foundations of this normative adage.

Now coming to Payal & the real plight: ( now I am going to make some huge assumptions, because very little info on Payal has been provided by the author in the excerpt)

Payal kind of girls of course belong to very progressive families. Families that encourage their daughters to study, encourage them to stand at par with the society, and empower them to take both big & small decisions in their life ( I am assuming all that because Payal has reached the level of working in the same office as the guy himself). For a girl like Payal, it is not very hard to fructify her desire of marrying the guys she wants to, primarily because just as the family has given her the liberty to chose her career & pursue it, they would do the same for her life-partner.

Now, look at the irony of the situation, the one who has the liberty to take decisons liberally, is afterall the puppet of the situation. I mean, what can she do, she is helpless, she fell in love with someone she thought loved her (which is not a bad assumption to make given that the guy after all thought of taking the proposal to his parents). So she was right there & then she lands into an awkward situation wherein she is being dictated by the guys misjudgement & weakness, the parents' ego & insecurity. If it were her own parents, she could have probably explained to them. But she cant explain, argue or fight with someone else's parents. Parents who arent hers & probably wont even consider any explainations from her because she is both a aforeign party & the party with the highest stake( hence likely to have a biased viewpoint to what is more a game of egos & weaknesses than LOVE).
The result is a situation of helplessness & despair, a feeling of 'how terribly wrong a decision did I take in the first place?"( when I got involved with this guy).

So while the author of the above post talks about the guy's plight, I think the real sufferer is the girl in this situation. And though we live in a developing society, these are some perils of living in an age which talks more of flux than development. I think our generation will have to bear the brunt of it...and hopefully our coming generations will reap the fruits of our hard times.

I know I have made several assumptions in the above article...the data that was available in the author's post was very little to build on the kind of conclusions that I have...my apologies to the author incase the conclusions I have drawn are not in sync with the point he was trying to make...but i have added a little more to the situation in order to understand the dynamics of such situations and the plausible causes & motivations of such situations in this developing society of ours.
I know a lot of things that I have spoken about are extremely contraversial, and maynot even apply to the society as a whole, but my judgement is based on a small sample of a segment which has seen itself in situations like the one mentioned by the author.