Dear Indian mothers - allow your adult daughters to have their private life

Okay, this may sound like a rant but I know for a fact that every Indian girl had, in some point in their life go through this struggle of their mother disallowing them from having anything private - THE MOTHER MUST KNOW EVERYTHING, DOWN TO THE MENSTRUAL CYCLES. Oh my god, I tell you.

When I was in school, my mom checked my school bag and school exercise books daily. Any discrepancy like a lost eraser and a red cross on a math sum were met with caning. I grew up and my mother checks my handbag now - like WTF mom. When I protest, she asks me what am I hiding from her. That makes me capitulate in a decapitating blow from the lady who gave birth to me.

I can't even keep a desktop wallpaper of my choice, my mom be like, "Why you always keep dark and dreary pics? So ominous. Put something propitious like sunshine." I try to reason with her, "No mom, I prefer moonshine. I maybe your daughter but I am not your carbon copy - example, you loathe cooking, I love cooking." Works for about 2 days and then it's back to, "Change your wallpaper. It's ungodly," as I work on my laptop.

I talk on phone and it's "Who you talking to?" loud enough for the person on the line to hear. And, as I talk on phone, my mom talks to me. I don't know if she's possessive. The worst is her eavesdropping and asking me why do I need to speak English to the person on call - "Scared if you speak in Tamil, I will understand ah?" I text and she'll be like, "Technology is spoiling girls."

There are trust issues too. My mother trusts our illiterate neighbour uncle more than she trusts me. And, whatever I say needs the backup of my male family members to have her convinced. Me shopping online using my debit card is met with scorn and distrust - "You are doing wrong things. You will get scammed. Then you'll get it from me." My mom is Internet illiterate - she listens to all kinds of caveats against online scams on TV and radio and thinks online stores are scams. It's not only exhausting dealing with her but also disappointing and makes me feel like a failure.

The only reason I wasn't aborted was because of the possibility that I would be a boy. And, trust me boys don't face this. Just because their genitals jut out, almost everything they do is justified - Indian moms actually fear their sons. When a son talks on phone, waa, reduce volume of TV so son can talk without disturbance. Whatever a son says is worth believing without further investigation. Which Indian mother dictates what her adult son should keep as desktop wallpaper or checks his bag?

Truly, sons have so much leeway than daughters at their mothers' hands. Even though I did better in academics than my cousin brothers (I don't have male birth siblings) I am somehow not as good as them according to my mom's behaviour. It's true what Virginia Apgar quoted, "Women are liberated when they are born - they just have to be better at what they do in a man's world and profession."

This is bad to say the least. Girls are educated too and they are just as capable, trustable and deserve privacy as boys, if not more and Indian mothers should start seeing things this way. We are women, not wide eyed school girls, If you must control daughters like this, then control sons the same way!