I was meeting Swami after a long time. This time
the reason was #ShareTheLoad. I wanted to understand the crux of the
reason behind a cruel reality of our society where Women have taken
the route to equality for the external world of a family by stepping
out to work and share the financial load of a family. But her label
of being a homemaker still remains intact. A woman despite taking
care of multiple roles of a mother, sister or a wife is still being
held solely responsible for household chores as her prime
responsibility. The age old phenomenon of 'division of labor' is
still unaltered and is deep rooted in our home, society, and nation
expecting the women of the house to own all responsibilities within
the four walls of the home.
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| Photo credit: Saarblitz via Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-SA |
Right since so many years, a child is taught that
a girl is the one performing domestic chores like cleaning, washing,
cooking, etc. while a boy in the family has to yearn for a profession
to be the primary earning member of the family and take the onus of
earning the bread and butter for the entire family. The scenario has
changed in one direction when girls are prepared for a professional
life and women have taken an equal responsibility of an equal or
maybe, a higher earner in the family. But what about the other side
of the wall? Why every household chore is still the responsibility of
the woman of the house even if she has to sacrifice her life,
profession, education, stamina, and energy manifold to just follow it
blindly without raising her voice against it?
Swami is my good old childhood friend turned a
multinational c-suite executive as per the last information we met a
decade back. After that I lost his track or probably he wanted to go
in an isolation state to take a final call of his life. During our
early education days I had a big impact of Swami's ideologies. He was
quite serious and matured during those days. He was beyond his age.
He, in fact, was my mentor, inspite of being my classmate. He never
differentiated between genders. When I used to visit his house, he
would be helping his mother in her household chores without a hitch.
He would go to kitchen to prepare tea, would not hesitate to wash
clothes, to clean house and so on. These small gestures turned me too
into similar kind of guy and I never felt insulted doing all such
things at home. Neither did my male chauvinism would get hurt.
After a decade when I got Swami's call, I could
not dare to ignore it. He was in India for a decade now after he
resigned from his MNC well flourishing job and decided to take a
different route. I got surprised to know that for last 10 years he is
on a mission to educate youth of the country with a cause. And the
cause is to eradicate gender bias in everybody's life. He has been
successful in this. He has become a wanderer. He visits remote
villages and towns to educate people about this. Educating them to
break the invisible walls between a man and a woman.
“You know the reason behind these walls is
nothing but our mindset that sets the barriers. Once you are able to
break that jinx, everything seems easy and attainable.” He said
when we met recently. I left my job because everyday I used to stand
in front of mirror and ask myself what is my purpose in life.” “And
one day I found the answer from within.” The answer that he got a
decade back made him resign from his job and start his own venture. A
venture where money is not the top priority for him. This is an
education venture where he not only teaches children who are the
builders of our nation but also their parents to make them understand
that the times are gone for creating a gap between a girl and a boy.
Today all are equal and have same set of
responsibilities. Men are equally homemaker with their family as
women of the house. If a woman can work full time why can't a man
share household chores with her and #ShareTheLoad? If a mother can
bear the pain of birth of her child, why can't father take the equal
ownership when the child is born?
That is Swami who is building his army of
youngsters to fight with these evils of our society and gear everyone
up to #ShareTheLoad. I feel proud to be part of Swami's bandwagon.
Find out Swami around you. It lies inside everybody's heart, mind,
and soul.
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