Do I really need to?

This is not technically a rant (I seem to have lost my ability to get really angry) but for the last few days I have engaged in what I can only call discourses (no not arguments) about gender equality and how we women always get it easy when it comes to a life post marriage and how men are the victims here... and well should I continue?

Its been really difficult explaining to someone my mother's age why marriage is not always the best possible option, when one contemplates the future. She is slowly coming to terms with the fact that women (girls for her) are moving out of their homes and setting up their homes, but not necessarily under the garb of marriage. There are job and out of town postings and further studies and not with a husband who carts her around like excess baggage.

She, of course, did not want to put us women down but believed it is time that man and woman equally participate in any and all household chores and those who didn't (men and women) should be derided into it. In fact she believes it has always been like that either men and women lived equally or the woman deigned over the household, making the men folk slog - at work at home and even in the kitchen!

Where are these men I say? Not my father or his father I feel. None of my friends who are married to relative strangers or even their girlfriends (male friends). Not even those men who are passing aquaintances of mine. Not even the woman who lives across from my house - who is awake no matter what time I sleep or get up and always in the kitchen. I know because thats the only room I can see from every room. I guess she (not my neighbour) grew up in a lucky family. But unfortunately for her the world does not move like the way she would want it to.

Her way of looking at the world is so beautifully simple. Perhaps that's why its painful to see how difficult it will be to translate into something tangible. I can hear rhythms of idealism start in my head. You need to like people when you meet them, work hard at relationships with them and slowly you will grow fonder of someone who you can build a life with, she says. As opposed to advice from a married peer of mine - pick some and make do.. its what you will do eventually...

I honestly do not know when things actually became complicated or I (or my generation) made it. But I know that I walk tall despite generations before me having been oppressed, represssed, tortured and all other shameful acts committed to. Despite the fact that even today female foetuses being aborted, baby girls strangled, girls made to lead a life depraved of education and nutrition and any other material comforts. That even today at home, when food is served and on the faint notion that it may fall short, my mum and I both wait till my dad has finished. Nobody ever told me explicitly but I still do it and well... I am amazed that optimism still persists. I guess hope does make the world go round.

When I was kid and in school, life and my entire future was this rosy picture where marraige may or may not have figured - I don't remember. But now, even in its absence, it makes such a strong presence felt that sometimes I do indeed wonder - what IS this fuss about?

And what's worse is that I still believe in marriage...