Opinion Hear the daughter
Maybe that's what my daughter is telling me too, to rage against things that matter, but to see the change, to acknowledge kindness, to allow her a world that girls like her can make in their own image.
To most other destinations, either you depended on parents with cars or the few lucky friends with one. Or, sat at home. (Representational/Getty) 
When you have a daughter, you learn to concede inch by inch.
First on that socks length, then that skirt, and finally (or, that’s the hope) the neckline. We came to the last milestone a few days ago when the Class 12 school “farewell” hit us, with the hunt that began for the sari and all that comes with it.
Arguments usually go this way: I begin by saying too deep or too short, my words sounding more and more unconvincing to my own ears, as I struggle to articulate why exactly. Her answer and wilting gaze never wavers: “If someone has a problem with what I wear, the problem is theirs, not mine.”
The husband tactfully stays away, peering from behind a book or a computer screen at this clash of the civilisations.
The son, “wiser” by a few years, comes in with his advice: “It’s worse for the girls, you know. The pressure is on them.”
But is it really, worse for the girls? I remember my own young years, still vivid thanks to the many instructions that bound them: Don’t take the CP subway after dark, avoid its dark corners after sundown, after 8 pm can’t take the Scindia Lane, always watch where the autorickshaw guy is taking you, ensure that you are not the last person on a bus…
To most other destinations, either you depended on parents with cars or the few lucky friends with one. Or, sat at home.
Now, girls are everywhere. Manning building entrances till end-of-day time, running stores, taking taxis, crowding the Metros, filling buses, riding Scootys, even Uber motorbikes. They are not “keeping an eye out”, as we were told. Most are indistinguishable from the rest of their generation — irrespective of gender — busy on their phones, lost in their earphones, confident of their space, comfortable in their clothes.
From the same UP where stories of girls sometimes end on a tree branch, I remember a girl smiling shyly as her father hails her as the “tallest” person of the family, class, village — not just for her height, but also her marks — as her brother stands nearby. I recall a cousin married into a conservative family lighting her father’s pyre because that was her wish. I see my own fairly conservative one now calling women members to join others for shots at the bar.
Look past the gory incidents that invariably make to the news, see the statistics carefully, and the world is not such a bad place most days.
It just feels that way because of the outrage — that au courant rage of our times, directed at others, never at oneself, shorn of reason but always in rhyme. Yes, bad things happen, but there is a reason justice delivered in public squares is a thing of the past.
Now we do the same in the social media public square, selectively (not a Bilkis Bano but a Nirbhaya; not against parents who would kill daughters but against men who loved them), not satisfied till we have had our taste of the blood; not making the world a better place in any way, but a little more unfair towards those who that particular day don’t wield the microphone.
In the book Wonder, a valuable lesson a teacher gives the young protagonists is: “between being right and being kind, choose kind”.
Maybe that’s what my daughter is telling me too, to rage against things that matter, but to see the change, to acknowledge kindness, to allow her a world that girls like her can make in their own image. And realise that, for her to do that, first she has to step out of ours.
And who is to say the road isn’t taking us there already — to a place where hemlines or necklines are choices, not moral boundaries; and where people appreciate that she loves her leather mini-skirt as much as her Diwali lehnga.
Share
