I happened to watch a short film starring Kajol sometime back . A strange pattern is seen in the film and it's something worth pondering .
The story revolves around three women of three successive generations from the same family - the grandmother , the mother and the daughter . In a normal storyline , you would expect the newer generation to get progressive and be a bit more modern and contemporary . But that is not the case in this story.
The grandmother , married in a conservative family , feels suffocated emotionally on being constantly criticized for ignoring the 'domestic duties' in pursuit of a career as writer. On being constantly nagged , she finally decides to separate from her husband , something extremely unconventional in those times.
Her daughter( Kajol ) grows up to be a brat after having a difficult childhood. She refrains from marriage after experiencing the sour relations of her parents and the agony that she faced as a result of their seperation . She grows up to be a hard core fiminist and an independent woman.
Now, one would expect the daughter and granddaughter of these two rebellious ladies to be an outgoing modern girl too. But here is an unexpected twist. The third generation girl turns out to be a submissive , docile and an ideologue girl . She marries a man belonging to a traditional conventional family. She reasons it out as the need to give a 'normal family' to her children and to not be judged as an independent single woman, that her mother was. She happily accepts the traditions and even undergoes a gender test to make sure of carrying a boy , on the advice of the family elders who had a preferance for a boy child .
This story made me ponder , is feminism really doing any good to the women in our country ? Are we really ready as a society for this change ? Is it causing more harm than good to the women?
Its an open question , that perhaps doesn't have a definite answer . Because we as a society are on crossroads. And as they say - the transitions are always painful !
