Mumbai: It has been hardly two days since Mandira Bedi lost her husband and the trolls are already shaming and trolling her. For what? performing her husband’s last rites. Yes read that again!
Mandira Bedi’s husband and director-producer Raj Kaushal passed away on Wednesday in Mumbai after suffering a cardiac arrest.
The actor and mother of two, took up the responsibility of performing her husband’s last rites by breaking patriarchal stereotypes. Soon, the videos and pictures started circulating online and the things that caught the trolls’ attention were how can a woman perform the last rites and how can she have the audacity to wear a pair of jeans and t-shirt instead of a white saree while mourning the death of her husband? ( yeh aaj kal ke ladkiyan bhi na!)
While most people commented on the media’s insensitivity in capturing a person’s private moments and paid their condolences, a section of society decided this was the right moment to troll Mandira for not behaving like an “adarsh Bhartiya naari”.
Why is it that women have to go through such vile shaming even while grieving the loss of a loved one? Ask yourself what are we doing wrong that some people have stooped to this level. Forget having the freedom to do whatever women want they can’t even have a safe space to grieve.
In the garb of ‘dharam’ and ‘sanskaar’ have we gone too far? For the unversed when someone dies in the family, it is usually the men who perform the last rites, but restricting a person from carrying out the last rites of a deceased relative simply because of gender is a regressive, patriarchal custom that we need to do well away with.
Also, the so called ‘dharam’ people try to protect, does it also teach to shame women for what they wear? Is it okay to shame someone who is grieving the loss of her partner? It is high time that we as a society ask these questions because we might be in 2021 but mentally lot of us are still stuck at old, regressive time.