Woman’s Day

On the International Woman’s Day, I would like to talk about people without a male child. Even in the 21^st century, people talk about the requirement of the male child. The reason they say is for the parents’ last rites. But today, even women perform these essential requirements in everybody’s life. Upanishads say that women can perform their parents’ last rites. Only thing is that they need to be clean and pure.

Let us take, for instance, Janhavi and Khushi Kapoor. Though they are girls, they lifted their mother’s body with their father. That is how Sridevi brought them up. There were so many people to shoulder her. But, the girls took strength from their mother and did it.

When my Dad was discharged recently post hospitalization and was weak, he could not climb the stairs to our first floor home. He had to be brought up on a stretcher. Little boys from the next building came to help. But, I took one of the legs of the stretcher despite the fact that the ward boys tried to dissuade me.

A lady living near our place told my Mom, “If you had a son, your life would have been easier. He would have lifted the stretcher.” She was degrading herself saying that. She is also a woman.

I would like to share another incident in this respect. When Mom was a teenager, her paternal grandmother fell ill. Her father and mother were too stunned to react. It was my Mom, who caught hold of 2 legs of the stretcher, on which her grandmother was lying. Only girls are stronger in this respect. Men are not. Thus, people should learn to respect women.