What lies beneath the veil....
The unnoticed India behind the veil finally is witnessing a massive revolution today. Oops! The veil yet sustains and starves for more independence. This ‘Dil Maange More’ attitude avails me surprised perspectives of ‘the common man’ amidst the crowd. Over the years people’s perception have changed so have changed the people. I remember being zapped at people’s reply often.
It would be an offense if I don’t share this experience. My college friend from her yellow woods homeland of ‘Sonepat’ leads a terrific life at Chennai. She often looses the count of her secret admirers and gives me a nice piece of entertainment every time I listen to her. She said once, “You know what; those ten days with my first boyfriend at our flat was crazy man. My parents were on vacation to native and left me because of exams. It was so sweet of him that he cooked for me”. Next month she is happily tying the knot with a guy chosen by her parents and literally gave a bang on my ear through her phone call while giving me the good news. I just sunk at her reply without any trace. Each nook and corner in the country sees a developing seed of bursting out oneself. The thought goes like this ‘I am better than you, the world knows me better when I am in jeans than in salwar.’ This attitude of present feminine reminds me of hypocrisy going great guns disguised in grooming.
The encounter of such stories doesn’t end here. My office colleague who just got married shared her grief with me, “Gosh, my in laws are coming and I have forgotten my practice of keeping the Ghungta. Moreover, the flat is no more giving me any space to hide my big pile of jeans.” At this junction, I could see the efforts been put to maintain the veil.
Over the years, this clumsy war between veiling and unveiling has been continuing at its pace. Every human being in India has a veil and takes the advantage of it the moment a crisis comes in. Lot of younger people in my college born and brought up in the laps of our Indian traditions and culture vague their tongue at the thought of speaking Hindi. They say they can’t speak anything else other than English. At college farewell, we buried ourselves inside the pocket translation dictionary of Chinese in order to find a suitable word for the theme as if we dint have any language of our own. I too would count myself in the race of veiling and unveiling.
The present day lifestyle, education, profession and upbringing methods are giving rise to out of the box happenings. Here, I can’t stop sharing an incident where I observed a lady pampering her toddler, “Beta, water drink karna hai?” The rest of day went controlling my laughter. Well, whatever it is, the fostering growth in the country certainly would give birth to many such unending instances of veiling and unveiling. And the show goes on....

Debashri