Women’s Web is saying Goodbye! Please make sure you read this important notification.
I like to write on simple and uncommon topics. Durga Puja is coming up soon, and I am excited to go to Kolkata and see the grand celebrations.
Early in the morning all the ladies gather around the Ma Durga, the goddess, they started cutting the fruits, lighting the diyas, applying rangoli, sorting out the flowers, getting everything ready for the puja. There is a great delight in doing this work where everyone is laughing and chatting with each other. But today as I was reading my favourite website – Women’s Web, it dawned on me that only women do this work. The men who help are the priests or college students who make money by doing this work. What about the men in the household?
Why is it that the men of the household only do the grocery shopping for the Pujas? Why don’t they start sorting the flowers, or checking which bel pata has three leaves and discarding the rest? Why are the men not involved in this process? If the priests can be male, then I am sure that any man can learn this task? How difficult is it to draw a rangoli using rice powder? Or cut a vegetable like cucumber? Or roll the cotton to make wicks to light the diyas? Why do we hear only womens’ voices in all the puja arrangements? My whole paragraph is filled with question marks which is very wrong but I wish to highlight how angry I am.
Today one of the slogans we hear that women don’t want special privileges but wish to be treated equally at every place. We all wish to celebrate the Pujas with our families which include our fathers, brothers and husbands; but then why can’t they help us in organizing these Pujas? We can also help do the grocery as that is something most women do regularly. I know the elders will frown upon me and the priests will be shocked, but it is high time that one by one we start involving men in the everyday task. It is not in a woman’s genes to be expert in organizing for all the Pujas. We learn and today I feel I should teach my son also.
It is such a minor issue yet it seems very important to me. We ask the men to hang the huge garlands around the goddess but we can’t ask these same men to sort the flowers? Yes you just have to sort flowers into different baskets. How difficult is it to take handful of rice and make 1,3,5 and 7 small mountains of them and place fruits and sweets over them? This is the Bengali naibiddo. I laugh. Please lets have the men of the household also participating in the actual Puja preparations.
Image Source – Unsplash
I love to write on women's issues. I strongly believe that every woman is capable of being more than just a homemaker. They are the leaders of our world. They can multi-task more read more...
This post has published with none or minimal editorial intervention. Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, individual posts do not necessarily represent the platform's views and opinions at all times.
Stay updated with our Weekly Newsletter or Daily Summary - or both!
Please enter your email address