"Equality is Sweet.”
Today’s my cousins 12th birthday. She’s literally my little mini-me; she looks like me, thinks like me, talks like me so basically a little version of me. Us girls bring such joy and warmth to our homes and families, right? We become the beauty figure in our family, we play around our living rooms until we then learn that we have to help around the house with chores; we learn that we have to educate ourselves; we learn that we have to earn and work hard, on top of learn that we hold the honour of our family and not to forget that we learn the day will come when we have to leave our homes to then move onto our next home.
But let’s throwback to the deep-rooted traditional day’s when ladoos (Indian sweets) only went out in celebration to other families because a newborn baby boy was born in a Punjabi home. Remember those days? When only Lohri was celebrated for boys, or when Paaths (blessings) were only done on the born of a boy and on the first birthday too. The days were there was no filter over how having a newborn boy come into the family brought such joy and pride over having a newborn girl come into the family. We saw in September 2015 this movement of Pink Ladoos. So, when a newborn baby girl is born into a Punjabi home we learn that us girls are just as deserving of ladoos as much as a newborn baby boy. There is this movement of breaking this deep-rooted Punjabi gender inequality because us girls are as equal as boys. And damn right we are! It’s creative movements like this that will expose this cultural inequality in a discreet thought-provoking way, don’t you think?
But it got me thinking, even with this movement out there, is there still this hidden desire for Punjabi families wanting their first baby to be a boy? Is there still that deep-rooted traditional thought of having a boy will benefit the family because they will carry the family name on? Or has there really been a change in this traditional thinking now? Have Punjabi families come to terms with that us girls hold their joy and pride just as much as their boys do?
I’ve grown up in a Punjabi family that has treated us girls equal to the boys. The girls in my family are the pillars of their family. Whether they are the daughters or daughter-in-law's, they hold their family. And that is what most us girls want for our families, right? It’s written in our Sikh scriptures that ‘women are equal to men.’ So why do these deep-rooted traditions create this gender cruelty that makes us girls feel less deserving of our family’s pride than the boys do in our family?
“From woman, man is born; within woman, man is conceived; to a woman he is engaged and married. Man is friends with woman; through woman, there future generations exist.
When his woman passes away, he seeks another woman; to a woman a man is bound.
So why call her bad?
From her kings are born. From a woman, woman is born; without woman there would be no one at all."
- Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji
I recently finished watching Made in Heaven; an Amazon prime original show about Tara and Karan who are wedding planners based in New Delhi. It’s a controversial show and worth a watch if you’re into seeing the real life culture and society vs the actual individuals getting married in the world of Indian culture. But there was one specific part of the whole series that stuck out for me; in an episode where the bride-to-be walked out on their pheras (wedding ceremony) and walked out on her husband and the family with saying ‘I’m not going to pay anyone to marry.’ That’s powerful, right? That was related to the whole dowry issue but my point of this is that us girls live in a culture that, as much as it has modernised, we need these steps of courage to be taken to make our value be taken serious. It’s the courage that will break patriarchy customs, break these traditional and cultural norms and break this gender inequality.
As well as the movement of Pink Ladoos, we have seen an inspiring break through with mother’s coming forward and performing customs in Sikh weddings that are usually performed by the father’s and this is how it should be, right? Our grandmothers, mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins should be able to perform the customs our male family members perform. They should be able to have the equal rights that are male family members have. They should be treated as the Sikh warriors that our Guru taught us women to be. We are the backbone of our families, and if it means Pink Ladoos will break the deep-rooted traditional thinking over boys vs girls and gender inequality in Punjabi homes then let’s bring on the Pink Ladoos and remember that without woman there would be no one at all.
