https://soundcloud.com/shivani-das-983855902/when-are-you-getting-married-pt1?si=059ff7f865c642489d35db6866880ca6&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
The episode "When are you getting married?", navigates the looming pressure and presence of marriage and other covid-induced situations at home.
This episode is in Malayalam. The host for this episode is Aswathy Nair, a postgraduate in Women’s studies and the respondent for this episode is a researcher who has preferred to stay anonymous.
This podcast is created by Shivani Das and Shivani Sankhla, as part of the Ideosync UNESCO Information Felłowship, June 2021 special cohort on intersectional feminism and digital rights.
PART-1
(Intro music)
Aswathy: Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode three of the Women’s emancipation terms and conditions applied podcast. I’m Aswathy Nair, your host for today’s episode, ‘When are you getting married?’. This will be part one of this episode. The episode will be in Malayalam and the subtitles will be displayed on the screen in English.
In today's episode, we are very excited to have our respondent who is a postgraduate in women’s studies and respondent has chosen to remain anonymous. She is currently working on research projects. Today we will be talking about how marriage pressures were built up and how these conversations were navigated, negotiated and how it was challenged when we returned home and were staying with our parents during this Covid-19 pandemic.
Aswathy: When we think of the start of Covid, we were all in different spaces and engaged in different things. In that context, where were you and from which space did you have to uproot the life that you’d created for yourself to come home?
Respondent: At the start of Covid, I was pursuing my masters. The first year had just ended. The break between the first year and second year for research and data collection purposes is when Covid arrived. We had not formed the understanding that Covid would freeze two years of our lives. So that was the thought we came with - yes, 2-3 weeks. A few things beyond understanding are going on but 2-3 weeks is the calculation with which I’d returned home. So I was only prepared for that long. That I’ll have to stay at home for two years is an understanding that I did not have at the time.
Respondent: It was only after I returned home that it very slowly dawned on me that Covid will have a very, very drastic impact on my life, and the people around me also, everyone. Everyone’s life would of course have an impact due to covid. So with regard to my house, the one thing that my parents had a strong problem with was my strong sense of individuality. Because the biggest thing that my education gave me was my self-confidence; self-reliance; a new or incredibly personal outlook. That was very hard for my parents to accept. Till then, I was just a girl who was growing up, while leaving for my education. But upon return, I was treated as a woman supposed to be married off to another house. If we think about it, in our Bharatiya “sanskaar”, what everyone fears the most is girls having an outlook/perspective of their own,
they shouldn't have their own stand, they shouldn’t have the confidence to create their own opinion, which we have been denied right from our childhoods. But that is what my education has given me.
Then what rolled out was a period of negotiation and navigation, and compromise. Hearing the word ‘compromise’ makes it seem as if that is all there is in life right now. So that is what then happened between me and my parents.
Aswathy: So, like you said while leaving you were treated as a girl and when you returned, you were welcomed as a woman of age who should be married off. How did this change manifest? How did you notice this change? How did you realise that this shift was taking place?