This day, last year for me, oxytocin peaked — I thought that I had finally found a man who could accept an independent woman. A few months later, my cortisol levels surged, for it all turned out to have been a mirage, and my eyes finally saw the red flags they had overlooked before. Through all this, the ones who gave me advice and love in equal measure were my mother, my sole parent after the loss of my father, and my younger sister, who held my hand when the journey back to myself seemed daunting. Now here I am, stronger and single.
From last spring to this spring, at an age where I should have been seeking out my mother for advice on how to handle a midlife crisis, I instead leaned on her like a crutch — to learn to live again, to trust that I could love again. Amidst the humdrum of daily life, as I found my feet again, my adrenaline levels rose but once. That was when my aunt, distressed over my lack of distress about being single, remarked that my mother had made a mistake in not prevailing upon her daughters to get married. According to my aunt, while we were failing by being too “choosy” and too strong as women — by not agreeing to “settle”, in other words — our mother was the main culprit as she warned us about the red flags to watch out for. My aunt’s advice to see those red flags as green — marriage being an underrated solution to the problems of life, in her view — fell on deaf ears.
That is why watching the video for a new social impact campaign called “Band Baaja Bitiya” felt bittersweet. It hit close to home. The video depicts a father who, upon learning of the abuse one of his daughters is suffering in her marital home, agonises over what to do. Voices echo the usual fears of social stigma. They speak of the daughter being given away in marriage – the “kanyadaan” — an act that renders her tears invisible.
Ultimately, the father makes his way to his daughter’s marital home, along with band–baaja, the quintessential signifier of good news. When the mystified in-laws ask what the celebration is for, he stands tall through his tears and says that he is celebrating the return of his daughter to her home; She is neither “paraaya” (belonging to someone else) nor “dhan” (property), he tells them. In doing so, he effectively dismantles two longstanding societal notions at once. One, that it’s not just social benchmarks, like marriage, that are worth celebrating, but also acts like the reclamation of one’s identity. Two, daughters are not property to be given away. One might even say that the real “punya” is not in giving away one’s daughter, but in having the strength to stand by her irrespective of her marital status.
Art does imitate life, for the makers of this campaign have been inspired by real-life events across Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, where fathers redefined social norms by announcing the return of their daughters with dignity. As per statistics from the National Commission for Women (NCW), of the 27,672 complaints received in 2025, domestic violence accounted for nearly 25 per cent and dowry harassment for nearly 15 per cent. These numbers speak volumes about the hidden pandemic of abuse, when the four walls of the home protect more than just family heirlooms.
But, I wondered, how welcoming was the environment around these fathers? If my mother, who belongs to a liberal circle, can be told that she is making a mistake in standing by her daughters till they find intellectually compatible partners, how deeply woven into our social fabric are such patriarchal assumptions? If my mother is told that her daughters are failing in their responsibility to continue the family line, then to what extent is our social fabric still bound by instincts of blood rather than deeds? If women like me — competent and independent in every sense — are repeatedly told to “adjust” in the name of marriage, then isn’t our social matrix still putting up invisible glass walls, not just ceilings, around women?
It is the classic “not in my backyard” syndrome. People want emancipated women as friends, but not in their homes (read, not as their wives). We support women against abuse, and we back them in their attempts to break menstrual taboos, but not when they start to affect how we do things in our families. We will like and share this video on social media, but will fail to take a stand in our own homes. The list goes on. Even now, women who return to their families are rarely seen as the strong ones. They are seen as flawed, unable to make the “adjustments” that the marital home demands.
The “Band Baaja Bitiya” video ends with the message about the countless women who suffer in silence because their families fail to stand by them. I wish I could sit down with these mothers and fathers, reel and real, not to goad, not to prod, but to share silence — one that speaks of strength and support, a cord that ties us together and thus liberates us all.
The writer is an officer of the Indian Revenue Service. Views are personal
