Re: No egg and chicken for girls!
Reading this novel about a Sikh family living in pre-partition Rawalpindi.
While the characters depict many thoughts which have not been changed to great extent over the decades (in fact century). Like there is a resistance by Sikh lady before her son-in-law not to take her seriously ill pregnant daughter to a doctor at Meo hospital, Lahore and due to complications the lady died. This is still followed in many parts of sub-continent (almost all religion and I can talk about Muslims). Purdah is given more importance than proper medical facilities especially when a lady patient has to consult a male doctor. The same thought as the sikh lady depicted ‘kiya meri beti ka jism ghair mard ko dikao ge’ prevails todate.
What was more confusing was the scene, where a girl (Sikh) was stopped from eating eggs and chicken, while sharing the tiffin with her brother. She was made to eat lentils (daal) and siwayyaN. While the reason given by the mother was that the boy need to eat because he was supposed to join army, no reason was given for stopping the girl having chicken and eggs.
What do you think could be the reason behind this restriction? Is it just that girls were supposed to avoid such food as their mothers were afraid of their gaining maturity before time. You know what I mean.
What could be the reason behind such attitudes? Is it something that is inbuilt in certain cultures or religions also affected this thought process. As I mentioned, some thoughts prevail in almost all the religions.
One thing to notice is that its almost always mother who does such discrimination. Fathers are normally not part of it. Mother in her time must have suffered the same and accepted it as a reality and is now passing the same opinion/reason to next generation to continue the tradition.
BTW please share the name of the novel.