Daughters Day Special (Part3)

Some Famous Indian Daughter Father Duo...

A little girl gives her trust in her father to guide her as she grows up not fully understanding what impact it will have on her.

As a little girl, the first love in her life is her father and how he treats her will have an effect on her relationship with men later on in her life.

Each child looks up to their father and in many instances imitates his gestures.

As daughters grow up they sometimes look for traits and facial expressions that resembles their father's expression.

Father making time to spend with his daughter helps build his daughter's self esteem.

When daughters feel love and support from their father they generally have good relationships in marriage.

Images of the father around the house cleaning, cooking and helping out have an impact on his daughter's perception of what men role in a family relationship is all about.

Things that parents do such as co-operating, responsibility, sharing, compromising, and mutual respecting each other affect his daughter's view of relationships.

As the daughter grows up it is both individuals' responsibility to maintain and continue to strengthen their relationship, if this is done when she was younger it will be easy later on.

A father may feel his relationship with his daughter becoming distant as she grows older and it is his chance to allow their relationship to grow and change and to remind himself the teachings he has given to her.

When a father takes his responsibility as a guide to his daughter future knowing fully well that this will have an impact on his daughter's life he becomes a co participant in creating a better future for his daughter.

The famous father daughter duo :

Pandit Nehru and Indira Gandhi-  

    Pandit Nehru and Indira Gandhi shared a very special relation, they were each others best friends. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru wrote manyletters to his daughter Indira Gandhi in the summer of 1928 when she was in Himalayas at Mussoorie and also throughout his life whenever he was away from Indira or on an official meeting. They werepersonal letters addressed to a little girl,ten years of age.They were quite informative , telling a child about the world. He shared his experiences and various information through these letters. Further after his death these letters were published as a book called "Letter to Daugheter"

" These letters deal with the beginnings of the earth and of man's awareness of himself. They were not merely letters to be read and put away.They bought a fresh outlook and aroused a feeling of concern for people and interest in the world around.They taught one to treat nature as a book.I spent absorbing hours studying stones and plants,the lifes of insects and at night, the stars "

--------------------INDIRA GANDHI.

Kaifi Azami and Shabana Azmi are the next daughter father duo. Please read the next blog to know about them.

Daughters Day Special (Part2)

Daughter and Father shares a very special relation...

The special bond that a father shares with his daughter cannot be expressed in few words. Father stands as the support pillar for his daughter, who in turn feels secured under his nourishment. He loves to watch her grow old as the time passes by, in the loving and protective environment set by him. He would always want to remain the most loving person in his daughter's life. Similar feelings are expressed in the popular song from the album 'The Wild Thornberrys Soundtrack'. Through the touching lyrics of the song, artist Paul Simon has conveyed the essence of the wonderful relationship between a daddy and his daughter.

Album: The Wild Thornberrys Soundtrack

Artist: Paul Simon

If you leap awake

In the mirror of a bad dream

And for a fraction of a second

You cant remember where you are

Just open your window

And follow your memory upstream

To the meadow in the mountain

Where we counted every falling star

I believe the light that shines on you

Will shine on you forever

And though I cant guarantee

Theres nothing scary hiding under your bed

I'm gonna stand guard

Like a postcard of a Golden Retriever

And never leave till I leave you

With a sweet dream in your head

Im gonna watch you shine

Gonna watch you grow

Gonna paint a sign

So youll always know

As long as one and one is two

There could never be a father

Who loved his daughter more than I love you

Trust your intuition

Its just like going fishing

You cast your line

And hope you get a bite

But you dont need to waste your time

Worrying about the market place

Try to help the human race

Struggling to survive its harshest night

Im gonna watch you shine

Gonna watch you grow

Gonna paint a sign

So youll always know

As long as one and one is two

There could never be a father

Who loved his daughter more than I love you

Im gonna watch you shine

Gonna watch you grow

Gonna paint a sign

So youll always know

As long as one and one is two

There could never be a father

Who loved his daughter more than I love you

Daughters Day Special (Part1)

Daughter, Mother best friends...

"I still hear you humming, Mama. The color of your song calls me home. The color of your words saying "Let her be. She got a right to be different. She gonna stumble on herself one of these days. Just let the child be." And I be, Mama."
The closest bond in the family is the one that is shared by a mother and her daughter. Theirs is a bittersweet relationship, which goes through numerous ups and downs in life and in the end, still turns out to be the most intimate of all the other relations. In her childhood, a daughter copies her mom and wants to be just like her. At the age of five, her mother is like her goddess. She smears her face with her mom's lipstick and models her earrings and high heels, wanting to be just like mommy. She applies her nail polish, mimics her creams-smothering motion and tries to do every thing that she sees her mother doing.

As she enters teenage, a daughter suddenly becomes the most ignorant and out-of-touch creature on the planet, for her mother. In this phase of her life, a daughter feels that her own mother does not understand her feelings. She prefers her friends over her mother and spends as much time away from home as possible. Then, somewhere between her twenties, a daughter realizes that the friend she was searching for throughout the teenage years was so near to her all the time and she is none other than her own mom! The relationship between a daughter and her mother is so complex, yet so simple.

When it comes to a woman and her daughter, fights are so common, be it because of the wide age gap between the two or due to the mom being over protective of her daughter or owing to the fact that the mom still treats her grown-up daughter like a kid. However, whenever there is a problem, the mother-daughter duo will be seen standing alongside and facing the world together. A daughter learns to be a woman from her mother. However, even after she becomes a mother of her own kids, she is pampered by her own mother. This is what makes their relationship all the more special. 
One thing that should never crop up between a mother and her daughter is a communication gap. A daughter should always try to talk to her mother openly, be it about her studies, friends or even boyfriend. She should try to make her mother understand her viewpoint and at the same point, try to appreciate the perspective of her mother. On the other hand, a mother needs to change according to the time, minimizing the generation gap between the two. She needs to give her freedom, trusting her not to misuse it. Soon enough, the small little problems will get resolved and the two of them would be able to share a really close bond.

Are we Indian women growing younger?

 Are we Indian women growing younger?

Or just putting off growing older? A 40-year-old woman today is not the stately matron of a generation ago, whose life, whether she was working or not, revolved around family and home. There werent many who considered themselves "young" at that age then, and fewer people still who didnt label them "aunty" even if they (the labellers) were in their mid-20s! (I'll come back to that bit later.)

I doubt the 40-year-olds of then (unless they came from a VERY broadminded family - I wouldnt know about that, mine was a typical middle-class Brahmin Iyer family with the outlook typical of such a family) would dream of wearing jeans and shorts and short T-shirts and skirts and anything else going in the world of fashion today. They might have clawed each other over the latest saree designs or salwar fashions, but nothing less decorous would ever be seen on them. Not at "that" age, when they were wives and mothers, possibly of teenage or pre-teen children.

I'm glad that women are staying younger nowadays. Fifty, sixty-plus-year-olds going around holding hands, dating, cheating, divorcing, re-marrying, getting drunk, travelling, determinedly living alone and independently... it was a refreshing change from back home, where turning 40 meant humdrum decorum and respectability, especially in public. Not that decorum or respectability are wrong. That's not what I'm not saying. (I'm also not condoning cheating, drunkenness and other unpleasantness which is as reprehensible in the over-40s as it is in the under-40s.) But to be able to live like you're young, rather than be burdened with middle-age because of family and societal obligations when you're really in your prime - that's desirable, that's required! In fact, I'd expect it. Women have other expectations to live up to, apart from the mother and wife ones.

 

I'm pleased to see that at least on the surface, things seem to be moving that way in India for your normal everyday women, not just celebrities and the jet-set millionaires/billionaires whose lives and lifestyles are well beyond normality anyway. Perhaps it's because more women are employed and financially independent. Perhaps it's to do with the increasing exposure to the West and its way of life. Whatever the reason, I'm just glad that Indian women are staying younger for longer.

Which brings me to the 20-somethings who address the 30-something women as "aunty". Nothing but nothing makes me see red quicker than this pseudo-humility. And most of the time, it IS pseudo. It's just making oneself feel younger at the expense of the older person. "I'm so young, I'm so immature, I'm so inexperienced, I'm such a child" - these statements get on my nerves! And this sort of behaviour doesnt happen at formal interviews - oh no. Where it happens is in a social environment, usually in front of others, just to impress upon them the much younger age of the so-called "young and immature" person.

I have nothing against children addressing me as aunty and I dont think I have any serious hang-ups about my age either. (Just dont ask me how old I am. Heh). But I'm not impressed at all when adults - and I consider anyone 20 years and above as adult - address comparative strangers as "aunty". "Mrs so and so" would be fine, first-name terms would be even better. Calling your uncle's wife "aunty" is more than fine. But if the addressee is not remotely related to you or known to you since childhood, "aunty" is a not-so-subtle put-down and just downright rude. Embarrassing, too. Not that everybody would agree with this, but it's what I feel.

Ok, rant over. Back to the older generation here in the West (and by West, I mean the UK since that's where I've lived the longest). I'm all for people of all ages living their life to the full... but there's also a limit to wild behaviour from them over-50s. They're meant to have a little more responsibility and wisdom than adolescents and young adults, not rival them in rowdy behaviour or thoughtless violence. I grant you, the older generation are more sinned against than sinning in terms of violence, etc,... but I cant help wishing that the minority of them who dont seem to have the sense they were born with would just grow up a bit! A little decorum and responsibility there wouldnt hurt.

Facing the reality: Women’s Status in India. It was a sunny aft...

Facing the reality:




Women’s Status in India.


It was a sunny aft...: "Women’s Status in India. It was a sunny afternoon when me and my friends were shopping and then decided to go to some good restaurant ..."

Women’s Status in India.


It was a sunny afternoon when I and my friends were shopping and then decided to go to some good restaurant and have lunch, suddenly I  saw a girl of my age with two small children of age between 2-3yrs in her arms and more 2 children following her while crossing the road. At first we thought that they might be her siblings but when she started begging to us at that time we came to know that she is mother of those children.  It was the time when I realized that I am so lucky that my parents gave me opportunity to be educated and tried to make me successful in life.

That day when I went back to hostel I did some survey on the status of women in Indian society. It brought me to a striking facts like
• half of the girls who live in developing cities will be married by their 20th birthday.
• According to UNICEF’s “State of the World’s Children-2009” report, 47% of India's women aged 20–24 were married before the legal age of 18, with 56% in rural areas. The report also showed that 40% of the world's child marriages occur in India.
• Girls between 13 and 18 years of age constitute the largest group in the sex industry. It is estimated that around 500,000 girls below 18 are victims of trafficking each year.
• 1,400 women die every day from pregnancy-related causes, 99 per cent of them in developing cities.  The maternal Mortality Rate  of  girls is more as compared to boys.
• Girls are the victims of domestic violence, either from her parents, husband any member of family.