Are Educated Indian Women Greater Losers?

Today(yesterday as per the time now lol)was an eventful day for me. I got up at 4:30 am for filling up my ‘placement registration form’ and switched on the internet before brushing my teeth. I entered the address of the registration website. The message flashed ‘The operation timed out’. I checked my connection (mine being a cdma wireless connection, I don’t trust my connection speed, but still for a hostel in anna univ this is cool) for sufficient speed and found that speed was good enough. I tried desperately for an hour or so. I got pissed off with all this shit, and finally came out of my room for some cool air, brushed my teeth, took bath and finished off my prayers. I had a good brisk walk in the cool morning not for the sake of it (I am a lazy f*****) but for going to the bus stop, catch the bus and attend a function in my uncle’s house.

I met some of my close relatives and the usual stuffs happened. My parents couldn’t come all the way from Madurai, so I represented my family. After all that piece of advice and crap about my forthcoming placements, one of my aunts started asking me about myself having a girl friend or not and stuffs like that. I know what they meant, I was really embarrassed. Fine, she told me the news of one of my distant cousin sister who is 3 years elder to me, getting married. I have heard of her to be really brilliant though I haven’t spoken to her much. She was famous in our family circle for her rocking performance in some all India science essay competition. She had a good AIR in that. Some crap. Above that she wanted to become an entrepreneur it seems. When we used to say we want to become engineer, we wanna become doctor, she used to say I wanna start a company like infy. She was always a topper in her school days, got pretty high scores in her 10th grade, scored okeyish in her 12th grade and joined Amrita CS. Ironically; the poor girl got placed in the same Infosys, the prototype in which she wanted to establish her organization.

After working for a year in Infosys she’s opted for the West Coast. Lemme make this point clear. When a decent looking brahmin girl from a decent family background finishes off her engineering and works for a software company for an year or two, there are just two options for her to settle in life-either East coast or West Coast. Sometimes it is a tough decision to make. Come on, west coast is technology hub with its typically Indian silicon valley. East coast is the finance capital of the world-simply put either an engineer groom or an MBA groom. Might sound good for boys to have such girls but when I think of girls I really feel sorry for them.

When such a girl grows, she has lots of ambitions and zeal to make it big in her life. At the end of it, everything goes shattered. Wedlock at the age of 22 or 23 is really horrible, unimaginable. Finally the girl might have all that comforts with a Porsche or a bungalow in Silicon Valley or a $100000 pa family income that a boy can’t have at the age of 22 or 23, but is it really satisfying? Life is something more than just getting settled comfortably. Life should be full of anxiety, thrill, fun and all that. I don’t mean everybody should become entrepreneurs. Come on, what is life without ups and downs here and there. Life should be enjoyed for at least 5-10 years without wedlock. IMHO I d say that women are bigger losers than many men. Men always enjoy their lives more than women. Most of the Indian women in the US are housewives in spite of being well educated.

I was really stunned to hear that this girl is also following the good old route. Where is her entrepreneurship spirit? Where are her dreams of starting a technology company in India?-Buried in the Silicon Valley.

I am not trying to say that all girls end up like that but at least many girls in my family with sound academics have ended so. Ironically I was discussing this with my friend when he told me that, today he met a 26 year lady from Calcutta who came to Anna Univ to market some instrumentation stuffs. It seems she owns an instru company and she has come all the way to market the product. There are people of this kind also, but the number is really less. Most of us know Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Nainalal Kidwai, Indra Nooyee, Chanda Kochar, Shikha Sharma, Renuka Ramnath, Lalit Gupte……the list might go on for some more lines. But considering the total women population in this country this is no where significant. Exceptions are always there but....

Here in this post I’m not referring to the empowerment of the women as a whole in the society. That is matter of obvious fact that women empowerment in India is an alarming need. I am sampling a particular part of the society which is supposed to be well progressed. But still the results seem shocking. The greatest irony is that, all these girls who waste their lives are from sound family background with good education. The high attrition rates of women in the software industry would add some salt into my argument.