Huh? What?

It was a week ago that I was going about reading the newspaper when I came across this shocking yet somewhat laughable headline:

"A Hindu son can divorce his wife for the cruelty of trying to pry him away from his 'pious obligation' to live with his aged parents and provide shelter to them. A son, brought up and given education by his parents, has a moral and legal obligation to take care and maintain the parents, when they become old and when they have either no income or have a meager income."

Okay! I was appalled. I read it slowly again trying to take in every word and understand what exactly the Supreme Court was implying. I am sure all the feminists out there would have had a field day with this one. I am a feminist myself. Not the kind that belittle men but the kind that are looking at empowering women. 

Anyway, firstly the entire judgement or whatever is clearly flawed and very biased. 

Let's get some things sorted first. The world is changing and so is society. Girls are being educated and are slowly but surely making their presence felt in the male dominant society. When I see this visible change happening I am quiet glad. But then there is this,that caused quiet a stir among us women. 

If you read the clause it says it is cruelty to pry(another word that shouldn't be there) him... Clearly the genius people who put this together did not know the meaning of cruelty. How can asking your husband to move away from his parents be cruel? Hello?! We just moved away from ours. We have been moving away from our parents forever.

Okay I know. A girl gets married and she has to move in with her in-laws and husband and be a obedient 'daughter-in-law' .. blah blah blah. 

Okay so why doesn't the rest of the civilized world follow this? A man marries to start a new life and family. A woman is not married off to serve his parents and him which is sadly what most people think a woman's marital duty is. 

Also, it says it is a man's pious obligation ... So apparently court of marriage, you were not aware that our parents educated us too. We have our dreams too. Some of our parents struggled, they took financial loans and educated us so that we can stand on our own feet when we are out into the real world. So don't we have any obligations? So our dads have to slog when they are old and grey because society would not allow his kind daughters to lend a hand? Do we let them suffer?

The article elaborated that in normal circumstances the wife has to live with her husband's family. For God's sake it is 2016. Wake up people. Child-marriage was normal, Sati was normal, female infanticide was normal. Aren't we making some ideal changes slowly? So why cant we change the way this is done?

There is something I would like to put out here. Recently a female acquaintance of mine received a marriage proposal. The families got talking and one of the first things the boys family asked the girl's was " Will your daughter frequently want to visit you? Because it is not so common for us and might be quiet inconvenient for our family" Luckily the girl's side cut them off immediately. I was stunned to hear this. There are still people who think a girl cant even visit her parents after marriage?

Now all of you don't start thinking I am a cliched feminist. I am not suggesting that the husbands have to leave their parents to suffer. But divorce? How can that be fair? How can that be equality? Our parents made us into who we are now. I wouldn't call this a moral obligation but love and gratitude that we all have towards our parents. A wife has as much right to fend for her parents as the husband. Just taking this as far as divorce just does not seem worth it. I think it is way smaller than that. Something that can be sorted out over a family discussion. Giving the weapon of divorce in the husbands hands is what has angered us.

Women are working now, they are bread-winners too. They have to stop being put second to men, and we have to stop with this patriarchal mind-set. There might be some cruelty from the wife to her husband, but surely living away from the parents is not cruelty.