Someone truly quoted that from the day you were born your fate is decided. How you go about that fate varies but no matter what the results are the same. This is very true and can be related to many contemporary successful and famous persons. Whenever I see the great fan following of Chetan Bhagat of Five Point Someone fame (in case someone don't know him), my belief on that quote gets stronger and stronger. I myself read Five Point Someone, mostly on peer pressure though, kinda found it okay, nice. However, all the other books which came later were a big disaster. I don't know how people can find such mediocre and loathful writing so compelling that Chetan Bhagat has such a huge clan of buffs. Or, may be reading Chetan Bhagat is just a "I am cool because I read Chetan Bhagat" factor among teenagers and young adults. Whatever, he is a famous writer in India and a widely read The Sunday Times of India columnist.
Today, I happen to read his article called "Home Truths of Career Wives" [http://bit.ly/PZDqTV]. I really appreciate the crux of the article. I myself is a strong believer in women's social and economic independence in India and has a deep sense of respect for the working women. But, I strongly denounce the way the article has been stereotyped and written. It has been written based on a recently released ga-ga-ga Bollywood movie called Cocktail, where the hero chooses the homely kind of girl to that of an (so-called) independent girl for marriage. Then he compares how Indian men prefers traditional phulka making girl as wives and gives his moral advises on benefits of choosing a career oriented woman. He says how Marissa Mayer instead of being 6 month pregnant is going to lead a Fortune 500 company and is a role model for all. In all these, although the spirit of womanhood seems to be celebrated, but for me it smelt something that of a male chauvinistic dictation for what men should choose !!!
I believe, what a woman really wants to do in her life is really a choice of the woman and no one else. Whether she wants to make phulkas for her family or lead a Fortune 500 company, its her choice and a woman should not be pigeonholed into categories of women depending on the work she does as it seem to be done in the article. The word phulka-making women itself sound so distasteful. How can someone say that the work of making food, looking after the kids and managing a home be a small task. God! It's far more tougher than a 9 to 6 corporate job and when you don't even get a paycheck for your work. I personally see Marrisa Mayer not as a woman who is 6 month pregnant and is going to lead Yahoo, but mostly as a great mind who is behind most of the UI design in software Google developed, software which everyone of us uses daily. Choosing a life partner should be based on whether you love that woman and on the feeling that you can spend the rest of your life with her. Rest follows automatically, where she wants to make phulkas or want to take/continue on a job, it should be her choice. Whether a woman has a educational pedigree of IIT and IIM or has a 7 digit paycheck can't be a primary criteria of marriage. Again, a few will be so lucky to have a choice as Saif Ali Khan had in the movie Cocktail. If I were him, I would have gone for Meera as well, not because she is traditional, but I found Diana Penty more hot and lovely than Deepika Padukone. [Disclaimer: I did not watch Cocktail, nor would I watch.]
It's terrible that even after 65 yrs. of our so-called independence, women in our country are subjected to social crimes like dowry, rape, atrocities of never ending erection of Indian men, moral policing by protector of Indian culture.
Everytime I read Chetan Bhagat, I feel good about my writing. Someone rightly christened him as the Rakhi Sawant of Indian Literature.
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