The Power Within: Why Women Are Just As Whole Without A Partner

Fragility thy name is not woman. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Women are whole in themselves. They don’t need a male companion to support them. The power that they have within themselves is of Goddess Durga, Kali and Chamundi, can rock the whole world.

My mother who passed away last year is my role model and the most valiant woman I have ever known. She did everything to make my dreams come true and supported me in all phases of life. I never felt any kind of discrimination as a child or as a teenager while growing up in Kanpur as a girl as my mother and the environment I grew up made me believe that boys and girls are equal.

Fragility thy name is not woman

It was only in 2009 when I left home for higher studies away from my protective surroundings I faced discrimination as a woman. Going to a different state and a city, I coped with the weather, food, language, and people. As a student, I came with full vigour and energy to do my best in my college life and to be surrounded by the best minds as the state I went to belonged to the land of Nobel laureates. Unfortunately, I felt like my energy getting drained with coping with people as being the only other state woman in the class that to miles and miles away from home without a male companion. I spent my time in the library doing well in academics and gaining an internship in the best institute. It was difficult to deal with situations as an only girl.

I loved attending conferences and symposiums and presenting papers. I asked my batchmates to attend the conferences with me but they disagreed as they had ‘boyfriend problems’ and I had to travel alone. The very fact that I was into academics and travelling and didn’t have a male companion to support me made me out of their league. But I was free to do whatever I wanted. I went to the library, read the books I wanted, played badminton, ate alone in the canteen.

The intellectual sessions of teaching was what I have been longing all my college life, I found them in different places  but what I also was in utter need of a loyal group of friends which I never had during my college life and also felt like becoming old each day with my teen years getting wasted. I stepped into the college when I was 17 and by the time I was 20 I felt like I have become very very old.

So I would like to again go back to the question of whether a woman in an unknown land who lives without a male companion cannot be seen by society. Aren’t women complete by themselves?

Why is the necessity of marriage? I remember reading one of the Jane Austen novels which says that happiness in marriage is only a matter of chance. I strongly believe that there is an urgency for women to support fellow women and show empathy. There is a need to make more women-centric movies. Need to show women as the most powerful of all characters. Women need to shout to be heard. A woman who shouts doesn’t create a scene she is just expressing herself if the world is not hearing her. No woman if she lives alone is a fool. 

Views expressed by the author are their own.