Do you love your daughter?

It's an irony of today's times. 

Girls are nurtured, educated, motivated to be career oriented but when it comes to be in marital bliss, they are given hordes of advice, apprehensions and sometimes unwanted support.

I do agree that to settle in a new environment of a new home, they need emotional and motivational support but sometimes doting parents forget the line of their care and affection.

INITIALLY EVERYTHING IS HUNKY DORY.

Change may cause initial inconvenience and could be full of surprises and shocks, but gradually our mind adapts and defends what is unacceptable.

There are a number of emotional messages going around the social media and we all forward and feel so good about those 'precious daughters messages'.

It's so nice to see people care so much for their daughters and it's for good change in mind set.

It's good but the hypocrisy starts when that strong, well educated daughter is married off.

One of my acquaintance, well bred, educated, liberated and you can add all those adjectives to her, as you call a modern day metropolitan girl. She shared her personal experience with me.

When her marriage was fixed, that time onward, she started saving for her 'dowry gifts' or her first year in her matrimonial house gifts, to be given by her parents to her.

How strange! She is well educated, bold girl!

I know it's difficult for a girl to make her in-laws understand about these orthodox things but if we don't change, why would other people? Point is - when she was so liberated and she married a man of her choice, couldn't she raise her voice against this nonsense gifting? It's not about occasional festival gifting. I make my point clear further.

This 'gifting' can go very far to spoil your daughter's future that I recently witnessed very closely and share with you.

One of my relatives'  daughter fell in a very odd situation. Their daughter, Rita was good looking, educated, working and social.

She was married off to a boy of her parents' choice, whom she also had a liking for. That boy, Rohit was hard working, charming, had good property in his name and was pleasant to talk to. Rohit used to visit Rita's father Mr.Sharma's bank quite often on official work. Mr. Sharma was so pleased with the good manners of that sincere boy that he decided to make him match for his daughter.

Rita and Rohit were married off with all pomp and show. Money was spent like anything for gifting and pleasing and what not!

Mr. Sharma was so happy that his only daughter was married off. He used to shower her with everything he could dream of.

A few months passed in all the goody goody exchanges and then things started getting slow.

Rohit never asked anything directly.  He passed the message to Rita directly or indirectly and she also being in blind love used to convey these messages to her parents. Lo and behold! All these 'messages' were duly and promptly fulfilled.

Within a year of marriage, Rohit lost his job as his company shut shop. He also disclosed that the property was an ancestral share with his unmarried sisters and mother. 

In the initial courtship period, he was not much inquired about lest he felt offended. So, Mr.Sharma was in a difficult situation. Family and daughter blamed him for not checking the credentials of the boy before marriage took place. He took it as his sole responsibility to ensure his daughter stay married. 

Now, Mr.Sharma forgot that in initial phase of life, when a couple starts a family, they face many challenges. He initiated to be a savior, a godfather and started cushioning up his daughter's marital life.

Now, after seventeen years of marriage, situation is that Rita has left her career long ago because all her money was going into Rohit's adventures. Besides, she was getting frustrated of doing duel work of home and office. 

Things got worse. Rohit asked Mr.Sharma to give him 'permanent solution' to his financial misery.

WHAT WAS THE PERMANENT SOLUTION? 

Permanent solution would have been to let them fend for themselves by motivating and encouraging them to work.

But No. Mr. Sharma sold his house and gave money to this 'once upon a time sincere and hardworking boy'. Moreover, he started giving regular money from his monthly pension to him.  Was it the solution?

Mr. Sharma's opinion was that everyone does face difficult times in life. If there is a helping hand, difficult times are easy to overcome.

WAS HE HELPING HIS DAUGHTER ?

This is not a stray incident. If you look around you can see that in many cases a daughter is married off to a wrong guy, who is no longer willing to do anything for a living but to have fun in his in-laws money. 

But here I have known this boy from the very beginning and know that once he was a man of high esteem, who used to believe in work. After marriage, he was reduced to be a dependent handicapped with a big ego and thankless attitude.

So what's the solution? A permanent solution?

Rita has hook up on a social networking site with a much younger, charming man. She has no intentions to marry again but she wants to live her own life on her own terms,now.

Rohit is being aggressive and blackmailing Rita that he would blackmail her father. Rita says she doesn't care because had he been earning well, she didn't need to go elsewhere.

Mr.Sharma recently had a heart attack.