Guilty of Being in Love

I was just wondering what is the right age when a person can be said to be mature enough to be in love. Parents would probably say that at sixteen people are too early to fall in love.. And when i see three-four years old already having boyfriends and girlfriends i feel its too early for them to fall in love. Then how do you decide at what age you can be in love. Isn't the ability to feel love inherent in us. Then why should there be an age when you can fall in love...

Another thought regarding love. Why is love hailed in movies and tabooed in reality? In movies we cry over a couple which is separated by the harsh world. But in reality when we encounter a couple we find turn our nose at PDA. Why does the social morality require you to be "settled" before you can be in love. Love is not a logical exercise in which you decide that this is the right time to find you partner and then go and look for one. Love is about feelings. Have we in the course of stressing upon the importance of relationship forgotten that the essence of relationship is love? Moreover how does your being in love make you value marriage less. Doesn't it make you value relationship more as you are ready to commit yourself no matter what happens?

Another thought. Why does marriage make everything "right"? If you are in love then you are frowned upon but as soon as you have a mangalsutra around your neck everything is sacred. One wonders whether the ethos of society are based on either logic or feelings or nothing. Or maybe they are based on dominance and need to constrict within certain rules. Maybe they are just based on making everyone fit a mould. Then the societal structures are built on fear.

Lets not forget feelings is the essence of our lives and not custom, tradition or honour. These three being just categories which have been used to serve the interests of those who get to define them.

Being a Woman - From a Lawyer's Perspective

I have sat through hours of discussion on feminism in class. I have seen feminism been ridiculed because my classmates did not find it theoretically consistent. Some said that feminists failed to understand what women want. Others said that feminists were men haters. What I am going to write here is not an argumentative paper. This is not an article to prove that feminist theory is right or wrong but this post is to give a feel of what feminists are arguing for. This is an attempt to tell myself and other why am I a feminist.

I am a very lucky woman. I have been brought up in an environment which has given me education, dignity and power. Its not that I have faced no disadvantages because of being a female but I have never felt that I am lesser than men. However, my immediate family could not preserve me from the attitudes and systems outside. I still don’t find the courage to narrate the specific incidents on a public forum but certain things made me question what does being a woman mean. Does our society have a space to hear the voices of women who have been battered, insulted and assaulted. As a law student I learned that a woman who has been battered and abused at home for years will be liable for at least culpable homicide if she murders her husband. This is because a law expects a victim of a crime to use the legal system for redressal and not punish the aggressor herself. But can a house wife be expected to approach the police or the courts to seek redressal. The legal system can not do justice to a helpless, powerless, oppressed woman. Our legal principles and maxims are limited to the actions of a reasonable man. Can the concept of reasonable man encompass the humiliation, agony and helplessness of a battered housewife.

Feminism helps to understand the experiences of not only women but also of other disadvantaged groups. Feminism tells the tale of power and oppression and the conceptual tools it yields can help to understand other forms of oppression also. It is not that women have no advantages over men. The position has been given to women will sometimes work to their advantage also. However, the way I see feminism the problem it has that the structures and systems that have been built are for men and do not represent and give space to women.

I would like to say how I see feminism. For me feminism is a call for equality, freedom and dignity. It is about getting our voices heard. Their theory will not appear to be logically consistent because logic depends on our language and language has been built for a system where the voices of women were not meant to be heard. They are trying to challenge the barriers and constrains that have been put on them. Their theories might not appear to be logical but they appear to be real to me. You can argue for length on public-private divide. But to understand it you have to think about a woman who was told that if her husband beats her it is her ghar ka mamala (domestic issue). Feminists are sometimes searching in dark because although they ask for equality it is very difficult to say what equality is. On the face of it women appear to be equal. We live in a free country then how do we ask for equality and freedom. Historical arguments talk about the past but they can not be used to say that today’s society is unequal. Sometimes feminists can not find what they are fighting against. If they say it is a chauvinist society then does it mean that men are bad. Who is the villain of the story. I admit that feminist have not given a theory which is fully consistent. But I think they have given very important concept, ideas and tools which are logically and empirically consistent. And these feminist insights help us to understand our social system and various practices, customs, proverbs and small things which we take for granted.