My love-hate relationship with India

While I read “A good girl’s guide to murder”, somewhere around chapter 3, a journalist had decided to declare the boy a murderer by the facts that: he was the boyfriend and that he was an Indian. This phrase took me by a wave of emotions! In the last sentences, the journalist described how Indian men see women as a commodity. As much as I was angry, deep inside me, being an Indian, I do not value the culture I come from at all, and all I want to know is: WHY did that statement make me so angry?

I have found freedom here in New Zealand I will forever be grateful for, yet I miss my country, my home. Even after creating a life here on my own two feet, I still call India “home”. Now let’s see why I have this love-hate relationship with India:

1) ‘Manvar’ means hospitality: Hospitality is good. But too much of it where you are peer pressured into everything that you cannot just not do something you don’t want to. I don’t think I ever wore my preferred style of clothing; first, my mom’s smile and a sad face would define my wardrobe and then my boyfriend’s need to show how perfect or hot I am. But when I was sick, it was my family’s too much love for me that made me better.

2) Constant objectification: When I hung out with my friends, I had to hear them talk about boobs and butts, married yet having a hunger for every other girl, but…