Who To Blame? The Archaic Tradition !

RR Gangmei *

A woman confronting a man in the Manipuri film "Khujin Gee Mami"

Week earlier, in the article, 'what women want; protection against violence,' by Dr. David Elangbam hits me right home. I'm not surprised to find that India ranking as the fourth most dangerous country for women to live in.

As it stated; forced marriage, domestic violence, labour and sex trafficking added to the danger for women in the country besides raping. Honestly I'm grief to enumerate that the male species didn't limit their snubbing act outside the four walls.

Forced marriage, raping etc .......etc are just like dirty stain on the outer garment that are being seen and disgusted by all. What we really needed to beseech ourselves is; what really lies beneath that stain outer garment? Now join me to unleash the happening within the 'assumed' cosy walls of the married couple home.

Being a married woman I not only experienced but happened to witness how male species outrageously ill-treated their wife without feeling any remorse, using their superiority over strength and taking advantage of the rotten archaic tradition of our culture.

Frankly, is it 30% male or, more or less, who treated their wife equally indifferent of the word 'superior' or 'inferior'? I, as a tribe and being a neighbourhood of it, would like to point out the most intolerable deportment of our married men.

JUST A SECOND! Let's way back together to the 1980s American pop singer 'Madonna' lyricist in one of her song, "I have a tale to tell sometimes it's so hard to hide it well. A man can tell a thousand lies, I've learnt my lesson well, Oh! I live to tell this secret I've hidden well."

Sometimes I wonder why it is so true. Where are the promises that he'd made when he courteous the woman? Then, she was his, the so called BREAD OF LIFE, but!- not small 'b' but big 'B' as the married life of months are swallowed by years and the time of his BREAD OF LIFE to become a mother of one and than two, his promises dim to zero bulb.

Predictably, there and then, one would get the first glimpse of the dormant male superiority. Dolefully the Romeo and Juliet saga flew out of the window. But most astoundingly, he still is the Romeo outside the four walls.

Those type of men fool around with beautiful chicks with a full six senses that his wife is toiling in torrential rain and scorging heat, with the infant on her back and toddler crying incoherently and children sitting in row for hunger strike, indifferent to her beauty, that was now wasted due to lack of caring and giving birth like a shooting of bullets in a battle.

As we look around most tribals married women can be consider as no beauty. Their faces are darken with what we called 'Mahing'. And thirty years old mother looks like twenty years older than the actual age of hers. And that is when her partner's dormant superiority erupted violently called the 'Zenith of superiority' resulting in 'HUSH-HUSH' polygamy.

Are we being treated the way we are being treated because we lack education? - weaker in strength? - and what else?.

Our parents narrow mindedness, with the assumption that female will marry and leave for her husband home as per educating them is uncalled for - is one that boils our blood to hundred degree celcius and the unforgivable archaic tradition of our society mainly the patriarchy way that give so much advantage to the male gender to feel superior excess our boiling point.

It is hard to change what has been practise many generations gone by; but respecting and giving equal rights to the weaker or inferior sex wouldn't defile the male species image but I believe it will help our nation move towards the brim of developement. Discrimination will only hinder it.

Odd but true; "Women can be a nuisance at times, but life without them will be boring".