Page 251 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

226 Tara Ubhe

Does a mother really feel like becoming mad when she has a girl?
With the norms that she has internalized, she also expresses what she
actually feels:

The hope was of a boy, my daughter has come
Now, my dear woman, who could be weary of you?
The mother gets a boy, the property gets an owner
In her womb no daughter, closed is her path to heaven.

The belief is that a woman should have a daughter to open her path to
heaven by her crying out in grief when at the time of death she is taken
to the cremation ground. A boy is welcome to look after the estate and
manage the household as its owner, but it is a love relation that binds
mother and daughter. A son is expected out of social constraint, but
in her heart a mother loves her daughter.

The hope was of a boy, why is a girl discredited?
Oh no! my woman! you are my heart’s diamond.

Though a son is born, what will his mother actually gain from it? She
may have got a boy, but for all that her poverty is not likely to disappear;
we do not see her, for example, all of a sudden becoming a builder:

The hope was of a boy, Parbati a daughter was born
Where did the mother with a son erect buildings?

A woman is aware in her mind of her qualities and strength, but she
fears society and because of social pressures she says that she cannot
achieve anything:

I was born from a tiger, I take off like a tiger
What to tell you, woman, I am born a woman.
I was born from a tiger, mine is like a tiger’s jaw
What to say, woman, I fell in woman’s bondage

A woman is subject to restrictions. She is ‘fallen under control’; in other
words, ‘she sank into madness’ and ‘she is kept under constraints’—
these are common expressions. As a consequence, she can not achieve
any thing. In our present terminology we say that ‘society looks down