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What Matriarchy taught me: An Indian woman who grew up in a matriarchal family, Paromita shares lessons the strong women in her family taught her.
I am an Indian woman, one of those who had the privilege of being brought up in a matriarchal family. I was single handedly raised by my Maa. Basically my growing up has been around some strong women. When you grow up with a matriarch, you pick up some lessons, some consciously others not. Here are a few lessons it taught me.
1) Do your own things: We were four siblings; three daughters and a son, my brother being the youngest. Whenever I needed something which I could run an errand for, I was trained to ride my bicycle and get it for myself. In gist, I was always trained to get my own things. So, when I grew up, I learnt to build my own paradise. I never waited for someone else to create one for me.
2) Talk it out: I was brought up in a small sleepy town. However, troubles did not keep afar. But whenever there would be one; it was talked out. There would be long talks, sometimes tempers did fly; but under no circumstance was violence used as a resort. Thus I learnt to talk out whenever I confronted any trouble, one of the best lessons, I ever learnt and later in life it paid me huge dividends.
Maa, Naani and Me
3) It is Okay for a man to cry: When men cried, for whatever reason, no hue and cry was raised. I learnt that men can be weak and flawed and it is okay. The softer emotions were taught to be respected. So, over the years, I remained great buddies with guys because they could spill their softer emotions in front of me.
4) Treat men as equals: The best lesson of survival, I learnt was to stand up for myself. No matter what, I learnt is to treat the other person as equal; especially men. And that changed the equations. It has worked wonders in my life. Nothing beats the grace of a woman who talks with her head high with respect and it begets respect.
These are the life nourishing lessons the matriarchs of my life left with me. I am proud that I come from matriarchy!
Proud Indian. Senior Writer at Women's Web. Columnist. Book Reviewer. Street Theatre - Aatish. Dreamer. Workaholic. read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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