Embracing Change

Choice is good and choice is bad. Choice is good, because you get to choose. Choice can be bad, because we may not always choose the good. When too many choices are thrown at us, we can get stressed and confused. If we are looking for specific things, we make a quick choice, else we become so swamped by the choices that we abandon our search, or choose something randomly in a sudden frustration and fret whether we chose in a hurry.

The other day, when I was buying dress for my granddaughter, my mother commented about the lack of options, and more importantly, the lack of freedom of making a choice in those days. It was not only the countless dresses displayed across several floors in the shopping complex and the discerning tastes of mere under-five-years that had caught her attention, but also the fact that many girls in our extended family were refusing to marry grooms of their parents’ choice.

The thought of marriage (Does arranged marriage work?) dominated and governed the upbringing of girls during my mother’s days. Girls couldn’t take up higher education, because that would mean finding grooms more educated than them and finding sufficient cash that’d make such a marriage possible. While women were mostly confined to their homes, a few harried fathers “permitted” their daughters to take up employment if only to ease the financial burden their marriages entailed, and this slowly paved way for women’s economic independence.

During the 60s and 70s, women had to base their choice of husbands on who would let them work. They had to work very hard to convince their husbands and inlaws that their “working” status did not affect any family responsibilities. This later changed in 80s and beyond; women who were unemployed or unwilling to work found fewer takers.

Today, higher education has become the norm, even if it means staying alone abroad. More women and more intermingling of sexes in colleges and in the workplace have skewed the man-woman relationship. Women have started developing friendship with the opposite sex; they have become quite strident in their demands of what they want in their spouses.

The other day, my friend was despairing that it had become difficult to find suitable bride for her son. Girls, wary of getting into relationships where their freedom may get curtailed, have usurped the hitherto guy’s prerogative to say ‘no’.