A Message For My Daughter On This Raksha Bandhan Day: The Hero Lies In You!

In my life I’ve never gone to my father, brothers, or my husband asking for protection and help even though they are more than ready to come forward to do so. 

I was a feminist even before I knew what the word meant.

If my parents asked me to do any chores, I would insist my younger twin brothers did the same. I was not going to do anything that they were exempt from. As young as I can remember, I was a feminist. A born feminist. It’s in my genes.

So, my brothers longed to flaunt those colorful threads in front of their friends. Girls from their school and neighborhood would tie them Rakhis. Not me.

Who did I need raksha from? After all, I was the Rakshini herself. I argued.

Besides, I’m the older one. I’m there for their protection always and vice versa. We don’t need a thread to prove anything to anybody. That was my logic, and my brothers understood it in time.

Years later, I had a change of heart for one Raksha Bandhan. Think it had something to do with the overdose of oxytocin post maternity.

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Am I over-thinking for a festival dedicated to sibling love?

Did I rob my brothers of their joy of flaunting their sister’s love in front of their friends?

Guilt took over. I decided to make-up. But, just once only, my feminist side reasoned. And so I bought two Rakhis for the first time in my life to tie for my brothers.

This time, they laughed.

“Are you mad, Tina?” Both refused to let me tie the rakhis for them.

That’s when I came to my senses. This is not me. We don’t need a thread to show and prove our love to anyone. We are always there for each other in good, bad, and ugly times.

I have traveled in my student years in buses and trains, dined in restaurants, and shopped-alone. Looking back, I did a lot of things solo without ever needing male protection as such. But that was more to do with my intrinsic nature, that yearns for its independence and solitude.

I loitered not just during the day on my bike but also went out to nightclubs. I could just be. But I knew well that with that freedom comes responsibility—to live up to the trust that my parents had in me—and I did.

Like most women, especially Indian women, I’ve been and still get stalked, proposed to, and subjected to unwarranted attention, whether online or offline. But in my life, I’ve learned to tackle such problems on my own. I have never gone to my father, brothers, or my husband asking for protection and help even though they are more than ready to come forward to do so.

As I discovered from the start, I’m enough to protect myself. That’s also my Raksha Bandhan message to my daughter, who is an only child—

“The hero lies in you.”

First published here.

Image source: marcisim on Pixabay

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