"Happy Married Life, Shivya Pathak" I weakly smiled seeing my condition, mangalsutra dangling in my neck, vermilion in hair and both hands filled with gold bangles.
"Come out quickly or do you want me to break the gate," my husband knocked again...
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I followed her to our bedroom and stepped in right behind her. “Sona,” I called softly. She hummed in response but didn’t turn.
Instead, she walked straight to the wardrobe, sliding it open and immediately beginning to sift through her sarees, her hands moving quicker than usual.
I moved closer, stopping just behind her—close enough to notice the slight tension in her shoulders. “What’s going on in your mind?” I asked gently.
She tilted her head just enough to glance at me over her shoulder. “Nothing.” And then she turned back, continuing her search as if the conversation hadn’t even happened.
I watched her for a moment before asking, more seriously this time, “Do you think what I did was wrong?”
Her hands didn’t pause. She pulled out an orange saree, unfolding it slightly before finally turning to face me.
“What you did wasn’t wrong,” she said calmly, meeting my eyes, “but it wasn’t right either.” She placed the saree over her arm and turned back to the wardrobe, sliding hangers aside. “You punished him for what he did, but did you think about why he did it? Where did he get the audacity to behave like that?”
I stayed quiet, watching her “You can stop people from speaking against you,” she continued, “but you can’t change their mindset.”
Her hand paused for a brief second before she exhaled softly. “And maybe I shouldn’t have made it such a big issue… because we live in a male-dominated society where women are valued less than a doormat.”
“You didn’t make it a big issue—it was already an issue,” I said, cutting in. “And we don’t live in a male-dominated society. Society was never meant to be dominated by any particular gender. Everyone plays their own role, so everyone should have equal power.”
She cut me off mid-sentence. “I know, Vedant, but unfortunately, it’s not like that. And it has been like this from the start. Siddharth Gautam abandoned his wife and son in the palace to search for the cause of human suffering and its solutions, and now we worship him, follow his ideology. But if the tables were turned and Yashodhara had done what he did, this society would never have let her live in peace. We would have remembered her as an evil woman.”
I didn’t have a single word to counter her argument. She left me speechless. She pulled out another saree, this time with more force than necessary. “And if a woman doesn’t respect herself, how can I expect a man to respect her? Take your aunt as an example—even now, she doesn’t think what he did was wrong. So how do I expect him to think his actions were wrong?”
She turned toward me again, her expression steady but tired. “Mard bolte hain kyunki auratein bolne deti hain. Women are brainwashed to such an extent that they can’t even differentiate whether someone is degrading them or just casually cracking a joke.”
