Shrinking Women

(Translation below)

There is a Malayalam word — thannishttakkaari. A woman who does what she likes. The way it is used, you would think it’s a crime. These women are treated as if they’re immoral, almost like criminals. In reality, it simply refers to a woman who dreams, works toward it and doesn’t just dismiss her dream as fantasy. I grew up watching women learn how to become smaller, quieter and easier to manage. The saddest part is that they did it all so well that they forgot they are more than that.

Their shrinkage was counted as goodness. “Adakkavum othukkavumulla kutti” title was and still is one of the highest achievements a girl can ever receive in the society.

Most older and middle-aged women around me were not encouraged to study. Their education was a matter of convenience, not of importance. Something that happened only when it fit the household – if it didn’t disturb anyone, if it didn’t cost too much. Nobody invested in their growth. Not their parents. Not even themselves. In financial terms, a non-performing asset. Little girls were –still are– told how they are liabilities, as if the world is doing them a favour for tolerating them (it’s common knowledge how girls must always feel indebted).

The children who were never even asked to be born.

And then they were married off, almost always to strangers.

Who really asked them what they wanted? Who took care of their likes and dislikes? In a way they were all Miggery Sows of the real world, ”Lord, child, and who is asking what you want?”

After marriage, they were expected to adapt, to sacrifice, to disappear into a complete stranger’s household and life. They accepted it as fate. That was their reality, the way things were.

The girl who chose her husband by herself bore a bad name. There are still people who take pride in saying that their daughters never chose love. Oh the crime that it is to love!

And now they tell me the same thing.

They tell me that this is how society works, that family is everything for a woman and sacrifice is inevitable. They talk to me of the greatness of motherhood and the beauty of family. They tell me that shrinking myself is maturity. They don’t say it cruelly. They say it like wisdom, as if dreams are inconvenient. “thannishttam venda mole.”

But I cannot accept that.

I feel for them. I mourn for them, it should not have happened. But what they did to survive cannot become my guide. I cannot be asked to repeat their disappearance just because it's been normalised. I cannot romanticise a forced family, I cannot find beauty in a motherhood that was barely a choice. And if I ask these dear women what the family actually offered them, they will definitely, indubitably, say safety. When statistically one in three women in India faces domestic violence of some sort, I cannot help but laugh at their illusion of safety.

Little girls are told, “If you don’t study well, we’ll marry you off”. And there, marriage becomes a mark of her failure. The society will show no mercy to the girl who didn’t score marks, no matter whatever other skills she has.

Where do these girls go?

They will be married off — to scrub the bathroom floors of a stranger’s house. Their words will carry no weight, she will become a ghost of her existence.

I once talked to a relative of mine who was deemed such a failure and was married off very early. She told me quietly; don’t marry early. She said that after marriage, she became someone else, an outsider. One day, her own family was no longer hers. She suddenly belonged to a house she didn’t grow up in, full of people she barely knew, some weren't even nice. She had nowhere to go. No ground beneath her feet, or a house to call her home.

And she was basically still a child when this happened, a teenager.

This was forced upon her by the people who were supposed to protect her.

Nobody talks about that.

Nobody talks about how girls are taught how their belonging —by extension their identity— is temporary, fragile.

Even their food taste is considered too much. Girls at young ages are still taught how they cannot have likes and dislikes, how their tastes should suit their husband’s. A girl with a developed taste is simply inconvenient, how can someone be possibly bothered by what she likes and doesn’t? As that cookery show host of Amritha TV infamously said “It’s better if young girls don’t learn to cook, their tastes and methods need a change after marriage anyway.”

Things are definitely better now. There are girls who rebelled, who fought for their cause. At least some of them have recognised the patterns. But progress is nowhere near. A girl who dares to differ has to be the absolute perfection. Every small failure she encounters will be attributed to her biology. A woman can only have a limited number of failures.

Marriage still prevails as the responsibility of the family. It’s the family that decides when, how and sometimes, even whom to marry. It’s almost never just a matter between two adults.

I am angry because I see what was taken from the women before me. I am angrier because I am expected to hand myself over willingly, smiling and grateful. Daylight robbery.

At this point my anger has turned into pure rage. Whatever her reasons were, Kannaki makes a lot of sense.

I refuse.

I refuse to shrink myself to make others comfortable. I refuse to treat my dreams insignificantly. I refuse to believe that womanhood requires shrinkage.

If that makes me difficult, so be it. If that makes me a thanishttakkaari, I will wear the word proudly.

Because the real crime is not wanting more.

The real crime is teaching generations of women that they never deserved it.

–Karthika

Rough Translation:

thannishttakkaari: A selfish woman

“Adakkavum othukkavumulla kutti”: A girl who is disciplined and obedient

“thannishttam venda mole”: "Don't be selfish little girl"