It’s the fourth Sunday in the month of September.
A repeat here, makes an appropriate start for the occasion. Translated, it reads:
‘When you pray seeking a son, god graces you with one.
When you pray seeking god himself, you beget a daughter.’
It’s no part of our tradition to celebrate days such as daughter’s, mother’s or father’s as far as I recall, though we certainly celebrate their birthdays in line with the family tradition. May be, as many suspect, it’s a very clever marketing ploy engineered and advanced by retail and fmcg industries. So what? It certainly serves as a yet another reminder to us, lost in the daily hustle and bustle, to find time and give special attention to people dear to us.
Mercifully the plight of daughters in our families is not what it was years ago. In many many families, they are more educated than the sons, empowered and financially independent too. Instances of they stepping in where the sons fail in their duty by the family or there are no sons are not uncommon. We’ve known girls exclusively looking for grooms who would let them stay close to their parents and/or financially support them after marriage with their income. A far cry from the age and time when distortions like Sati, dowry harassment and female feticide had over time crept into certain sections of a society (the last two not totally eliminated even now though on the wane) that always worshipped more goddesses than gods. Today one hears of many a glass ceiling broken to smithereens by girls in their single-minded pursuit of life/career goals, often starting off from humble beginnings. Quite often all these while still keeping the structure of traditional marriage intact!
It is these daughters who would be giving India an unassailable competitive advantage – the available workforce just gets doubled at all levels and often with better quality, application and stability.
Rounding up with a visual ode to the doughty daughters – verily, children – trying against odds to making it in life for themselves and their families:
In Pushkar Mela
End
Source: WildFilmsIndia, Nov 9, 2014, 100% சிரிப்பு இலவசம், etc.
Sanmargam 