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Diary of a Feminist: A Fatal Marriage

When something goes wrong with a marriage, it’s generally the woman wh­ose life is wrecked. I know quite a few women whom miseries have befallen af­ter marriage and I often think had they not been married they wouldn’t have suffered. But if they had remained unmarried, their lives might have been empty. And I wonder if a feeling of emptiness is better than a life of pain. Or is it choosing bet­ween the devil and the deep blue sea? I don’t re­ally know.

Anyway. There is one mar­riage I have seen which de­stroyed the man and not the woman. Marriage killed him. I mean literally.

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Diary of a Feminist: Marrying One’s Brother-in-Law

I had attended her wed­ding. A typical wedding it was. And Tabassum made a typical bride — beauti­ful, bejewelled, stony. I looked at her up close. Her eyes were closed. There was nothing on her face I could read.

‘Oh God!’ I felt helpless. I wanted so much to know what was going on inside her head, inside her heart. If only I could have a glimpse of the soul behind the glossy, inert mass of bridal red.

She was getting married. To a widower. Her brother-in-law! And her dead sister’s children, be­wildered and silent, en­circled their Choti khala, their new ammi.

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Diary of a Feminist: The Mystery of Love and (Second) Marriage

Love is a mystery. Or so they say. But marriages in our society puzzle me more. Particularly the sec­ond marriage. Sure, sec­ond marriages are no en­igma for men. It’s quite simple and easy for them. But why? And how could it be so smooth, so painless?

I wondered as I watched Bano Qudsia’s drama of ’83, Hikayatain, Shikayatain at my friend’s place. In a fara­way, small, peaceful city of Azad Kashmir. My friend is married. And like most of the couples I’ve come across, they’re quite a mismatch. My friend and her husband have only three things in common — age, blood and temper. Both are 29, first cousins and temperamental.

So there I was — a house guest — watching the play late at night. My friend’s husband was in the other room with their four-year-old daughter (he is not interested in plays. He prefers to watch wrestling, cricket).

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Diary of a Feminist: Is My Perception Biased?

Sometimes I wonder why most of the suffering humans I come across happen to be wo­men. Perhaps I look at the world with a tinted glass, with a feminist hue. Which makes women substantial, of flesh and blood, anchored in the centre of my visual span. While men, papery, ghost-­like, float at the periphery.

Is my perception selective? Might be. But I don’t under­stand this process of selectiv­ity. It is in my genes which make me perceive, make me feel so intensely about my own kind? Or is it in the envi­ron — the women’s condition — which etch them on my mind?

I try hard. Yes, I do re­member a few men whom I know closely. Who had suffered in life. Or are suffer­ing. Of poverty, or disease, or circumstances. But their mis­eries I always ascribe either to fate or to their own failure. That’s not the case with wo­men. Somehow I always find a man behind a suffering woman.

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Diary of a Feminist: The Deadly Game of Love

It was for the first time in my life, as far as I re­member, that I reacted to a murder in that peculiar way: awe and delight. My instant reaction was ‘Bravo!’ when I read the news, ‘She shot her lover dead.’

Slightly disturbed at this brutal reaction to a grue­some act, I tried to make amends by reasoning with myself: ‘But she destroyed herself too. Didn’t she? She might be hanged.’

But damn the gallows.

The fact remains that I was fascinated and still can’t make myself believe she did a wrong. And I am not alone. I talked to a few friends of mine, all women, about this episode that took place in Lahore and was reported two weeks back. And they all reacted the same way.

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Diary of a Feminist: When the Magic is Gone

Could marriage be the most boring end of a ro­mance? Once I thought it couldn’t be. And I used to be furious at those who mocked at love-birds when they took wedding vows. Now as I watch Seema and Umer, married for the last six months, I couldn’t help but yawn and say, “How boring!”

Since the days when I was an idealist and had a heady notion of love, I have ob­served some love marriages. And how did they turn out? Anywhere between sour, troubled, smooth or inspiring. Never before did I witness a love marriage that was boring.

For instance, Parveen and Sultan’s turned out to be a real tough one.

After marriage Parveen found out Sultan wasn’t am­bitious enough and he dis­covered she was too materialistic. And they both realised their likes and dis­likes weren’t the same.

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Dairy of a Feminist: Friendship Between Men and Women

Why can’t we have men friends the way we have women friends? A volatile question indeed, that of­ten puzzles a friend of mine. She thinks women can have friendship with men.

What she means by friend­ship is a relationship based on mutual understanding and care and sharing of interests and ideas — minus motive, sans desire. Just like a rela­tionship that exists between two female friends.

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