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How should we live?

18 November 2004, 18:00 PM
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
By FM Chaudhury, Estelle Mahnuma, Suchitra A Sufia, M Shahi Gulshan 2, Dhaka
18 November 2004, 18:00 PM
We see women with dupattas and saris and sometimes even the dupattas are hanging and sweeping the dirty floor. Clothing must be practical, comfortable, and safe. Women must be sensible, and build their personality, instead of spending huge amounts of money and hoarding saris. In America and western countries, when women learn self-defence, they also have to wear clothing that is practical and safe. The poor people of Bangladesh make saris and they also work to make extra cloth like dupattas. Clothing must be practical.

We don't want to be "wrapped in tradition" or "trapped in tradition". When I was in Graduate School, I was reading a paper on Building Gender Free and Unbiased Language (for example, using both pronouns he/she). We read good books, magazines, or articles. For selective reading, we also have to set aside a certain amount of time to read. When we get the newspapers, we flip through it very quickly, and turn through the editorial and the letter page. The rest sometimes becomes information overload (saturation).

Sometimes our grandmother or someone sent us saris, and we kept sending them back. We saw another line, "wrapped in tradition". We don't want to be wrapped or trapped. There are so many advertisements that are gender biased. Some women want to hoard saris. But there are many women whose aim in life is not to hoard saris.

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So our grandmothers gave us saris, we returned all of them. We don't want to fry greasy fish. We are not lured by the swish of saris. We are not wrapped or trapped in tradition. We want to be human beings like Fa-Mulan. Our first love is not a sari. We love to work, read, write, and live life.