For most of this year I have blogged in secret or had pseudonym pages where I could gather my thoughts without condemnation.
I lived with the powerful ultimatum, that “my friends think and know you are crazy”.
So i gave them less fuel. I played nice lady and stopped saying out loud the things you do not say in polite company.
However. It is NOT 1974 and I am not nine years old. And in my very adult, property owning, mortgage paying world actually the rules have thankfully been upended.
In polite twenty first century society, men who rape small children are called pedophiles not miscreants.
In the 21st century, men who put down women, tell them they do not know what they are talking about are called very rude abusive men.
People get away with everything when the weapon is that you will be exiled if you speak out. It is a tactic of ownership, possession and control.
It works. Very well. It is never easy in polite society to say Good gods, how utterly ignorant.
But from now on. I am calling it.
India is a remarkable society. They love fiercely. Indian women friends have excelled in every field in the world so these stories of not treating women well are not true. They are all earning money and participating fully in life.
The people who pretend India is not fully educated, or not ready for change are the ignorant ones that are holding people, and themselves back. It is the men who refuse to live alongside the success of women. It is men who pretend women are going shopping or nagging. It is men who downplay their wives accomplishments.
I see Indian women chief ministers, doctors, scholars, curators, authors, celebrities, home makers, mothers, artists all thriving, laughing, living full and rich lives.
It is these men who dis-empower and long for the days when they could drink all night and watch girls by day.
Male entitlement in India is the problem. They are so damn busy beating their chests, they have not seen or refuse to see what women have achieved in the last forty years.
Little boys not wanting to face the greatness of women as their equal counterpart.
It is these men downplaying rape. It is the men refusing to be vocal. It is the men not protesting in the streets or changing laws. It is the men not upholding women feeling safe in public parks. It is these men who do not want life to change.
Really. Thank you great, astonishing India that exists. To the millions of parents and grand parents that stamped out inequality and educated your beautiful daughters. Your fight is still our fight and thank you for teaching us to be seen and heard.
the bad indian wife 