Day 298 (True heirs!)

 I just had a memory popped up in my head today which happened a really long time ago. Maybe 2 decades before.. I really can’t remember when. But anyway, my father was getting the house renovated during which he decided to give a name to the house and a name plate engraved. This is a very common proud moment of anyone who owns a house in that era. So anyway, though I was a kid but being “the literature geek” I was asked to come up with some name for the house that covers the first alphabet of all the family members living there at that time. So that’s me, my 2 sisters, mummy and papa. And with all the letters 3 S, 1 K and 1 R, the most sensible Hindi name I could come up with was “Sanskaar”. So we named the house Sanskaar and my father got all the 5 names engraved below the house name in the order of their age:

Rajiv Garg

Kanchan Garg

Supriya

Shipra

Shreya

A lot of people of “the society” questioned my father on putting daughters’ name on the name plate. After all, daughters are not supposed to have any claim on their father’s house. They are just temporary guests!

My father answered nothing at times and other times he said “why not” and the name was already engraved. Me being a “never satisfied” creature, didn’t stop here to admire my father’s rebellion against the society. Infact I thought why don’t we 3 daughters have the surname engraved too? So he believes that the house can be ours but as per typical societal norms, the surname is not ours to claim?

But now after 2 decades I realise these are such petty thoughts. I mean I don’t give a damn whether I have my name on that name plate and whether he believes in me to carry the family name. What’s family name anyway? What’s family should be the first question actually. Family is people who stand by you through thick and thin and for whom you are there no matter what. Family is just not blood and relation, family is holding your hand when you are up against the world or when you are at the edge of the world. 

Today I have my own house, paid by my own hard-earned money and I don’t give a damn whether I have a nameplate announcing the names or not. I might have it for decorative purposes but it’s not to define who is my family. I certainly don’t need surnames associated with my family because that defines nothing. 

As per societal norms, it’s easy for me to say as I have a son and having a son means having someone to carry the family ahead. But that society never thinks that the woman who gave birth to that son was by societal norms neither a true part of the family where she was born in and nor a true part of the family of the man who fathers the child. And still the boy is the true heir and if it were a girl , she would not be.

These are small things and we take these very lightly so much so that they go unnoticed as well but these form the base of our mentality and the pillars of the ecosystem that we live in and if we sit back and think on it, there is really no logical reasoning of what we believe in and why.