A woman for a woman

 

I have a master’s degree and a NET and I still need to learn to cook and clean. No, let me back it up, I have a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree and NET and yet, I still need to cook and clean. Mind you, it is not as uptight and vague as it sounds, sure I sound lazy but here it goes, the standard of learning to cook and clean is different for men and women in a Mizo society.

To be precisely deep, when a boy learns to cook and clean, he is learning to be independent and capable enough to handle himself and his resources in a society that shall help him to be a reliable man and companion. When a girl learns to cook and clean, it is not for herself but for the woman she is becoming to be. When a girl learns to cook and clean, she is doing it for her family and for the sanctity of being the good and ideal daughter, she is still needed to perform traditional duties because getting good marks isn’t enough for her to be a good child within the society, traditional values that is filled with lenience and obedience instead makes her the perfect child. A girl child who cooks and cleans becomes a woman who cooks and cleans but it is not for herself anymore. She is not merely helping the parents and the household any longer because she is doing it for her future husband and his family. She can have all the degrees, success and qualification in the world but for her, being a good wife and mother should matter the most. It is understandable that for one’s rights of freedom, duty has to be performed however; a woman can possess all the finest degrees in the world and still have to be the most perfect daughter in order to become a bride in the traditional society. The moment she is coherent of the world from right to wrong, her body is no longer hers, and her mind is no longer hers. There is no room for autonomy except for ‘love’ to which she has to eventually marry the person she loves. Her lessons, work, duties and understanding becomes one with her husband to whom she has to bend her every will to her husband and children’s whim.

In the traditional society of Mizoram, a girl is expected to be patient, obedient and lenient with her suitors to which, there is no room for rejection because it is not dutiful to be rude to the people who show their admiration for her, not even for the sake of her comfort and security. She is forced to entertain because she has to be the polite, obedient daughter of her parents and as a face of her household. ‘Spinster’ that is a word being thrown around the society for women who defied society’s expectations and refused to marry. They are used as warnings because she is pitiful, lonely, undesirable, a failure of timing or a woman who “missed her chance”. “Bachelor” sounds charming but “Spinster” never does. When a woman who has all the success in the world and refuses to marry and be traditional, she is seen as someone to be feared, not as someone to be revered. She instead, becomes a cautionary tale told to younger women.

Autonomy becomes fruitless within inherited tradition to which a woman has to understand that she has to become the perfect daughter for her family and then move on to be the perfect woman of the household and then onto be the perfect wife and mother for her husband. Her life is not hers, it is owned by her parents and her husband. Even her choices which she thought were her own is highly limited to where she thinks she has to choose, not get to choose. Her duty is certainly meaningful even if it is compulsory because it is all she knows and what she has learned. Her education, her degrees and her success aren’t enough to identify her, they’re just accolades, not her ambition, and because her ambition has to be compulsory to the values, tradition and belief she has been taught. She has to follow them regardless of how accomplished she is because it is her duty and without it, her life is meaningless and fruitless.

A woman could be the smartest person in the room all her life and still reduce herself to become a good wife and mother just for the sake of what she should want because it is not acceptable to choose otherwise and woman who is incapable of learning her duties is labeled as a failure even before she understands herself and the world to which, her passion and ambition for herself and her future becomes distorted with being a failure. Because tradition has to mean more for her since she is yet to become a woman.

And that is why I still have to learn to cook and clean after my accomplishments.