Pritam's Blog
Why Indian Kids Falling In Love Is A Bad Thing
For a long time, I found it quite appalling that Indian parents consider falling in love and being romantically involved with someone when you are young, when you are still a student to be precise, a bad thing.
They say things like it will hamper your studies and now is the time to build your future, blah blah blah…
I mean a lot of things that an average Indian goes through during their childhood, careful consideration of which will probably reveal these things contribute to childhood trauma, are considered acceptable.
Like it’s acceptable for Indian kids to grow up in an authoritarian joint family where everybody and not just your parents has a say about what’s good for you. It only confuses the kid.
Likewise, it’s absolutely acceptable to expose the kid to the ugly animalistic fights and violence that parents and other grown ups in the family engage in.
I understand disagreement is natural but exposing an innocent kid to its ugly side saying that these things happen and are proof of the underlying love isn’t acceptable.
Sadly, these things are naturalized by each generation. Doesn’t these things hamper one’s studies?
Our very understanding of ‘education’ is so fucked up here. To us, good education is measured in terms of employability and not in terms of humanity. The result? We are a bunch of educated illiterates. And sadly, highly unemployable too. If you consider the bigger picture with the ‘culture’ aspect and all, I think every Indian family is dysfunctional. But that’s not in the scope of this post.
The point is we always put the blame on falling in love (among other things). Why so? How falling in love, no matter how young you are, can be disastrous if you don’t go out of your way to make it disastrous? Don’t give the unprotected sex bullshit here. That has to do with proper sex education, something many of us shy away from.
I think it has to do with patriarchy. Not trying to put boundaries around the very concept of love, but experiencing romantic love when you are young and still not corrupted by the ugly practicalities of life kind of frees you.
And that’s not good for a society where individual needs and wishes come after the needs, expectations, and demands of the family. Once you have a taste of freedom, you are not likely to embrace the unnecessary complexities of traditional Indian values. And that’s what scares them?
In a culture, which strongly believes that the fate of any romantic relationship (provided it’s heterosexual and caste criteria are met) is marriage, an institution that’s more of a many-to-many business than one-to-one, entertaining tensionless, free love, like it’s none of my business, isn’t good. Afterall, why let the couple taste freedom when they have to come back home abandoning their own needs and wishes? Right?
I reject your culture and I refuse to kneel before your expectations.