Dadi's Family

A traditional extended family living in Northern India can become acquainted through the viewing of Dadi’s family. Dadi, meaning grandmother in Hindu, lets us explore her family up close and personal as we follow the trials and tribulations the family encounters through a daily basis. The family deals with the span of three generations and their conflicting interpretations of the ideal family life. Dadi lets us look at the family, but the film opens our eyes, particularly on the women, in addition to the problems they face. The film inspects the women’s battle to secure their status in their family through dealing with a patriarchal mentality. The women also attempt to exert their power, and through it all we are familiarized to Dadi, the

In Dadi’s family, Dadi supports this claim as she describes being a woman as being an inferior caste. Being a woman includes being submissive and being able to work hard in a household for the family, as Dadi also expresses. Dadi sheds light on her experience when she was once a new daughter in-law. Women were to cover their face from father in laws and brother in laws as to show respect to the men. Dadi also expresses that as a new bride there were no rights for women, except though the men. Although times have changed from Dadi being a new bride, times have not fully changed completely as when Darshini and Sita became daughter in laws. The preparation of new brides shows a patriarchal mentality. The film expresses that women are taken away from their families and marry into a family of strangers as they join the male’s family. The brides are obligated to leave their homes and their past life all behind to live in their groom’s home. The women are forced to adapt to the male’s lifestyle and to subside the life they were living as individual women. Women’s main purpose is to work, even in wealthy

Dadi speaks upon the importance of the mother in law, the mother in law was to be respected in any way possible when you were a new daughter in law. If the mother in law was not respected the husband would teach the wife a lesson for not respecting his mother. Now, daughter in laws exert their power towards not only their mother in law but also their husband. In early era, daughter in laws used to fear their mother in laws as they were not to speak up for themselves on how they were treated, as Dadi explains. As times have changed we take notice on the difference of how Dadi speaks on her experiences to what we see now with the interaction with the daughter in laws and her family in law. We catch sight of Darshini as someone who speaks up towards her mother in law. Darshini feels the amount of work they are necessitated to do is all because of Dadi. Dadi is also witnessed talking poorly about her daughter in law Sita, and Darshini is quick to put Dadi in her place and tell her to stop and get back to work. The use of speaking back to one’s mother in law is one ample difference on how women were timid and how times have changed, daughter in laws have become more out spoken and confident to talk back. Dadi expresses that no one listens to the mother in law now. If the same energy was used in Dadi’s era, the women would quickly be beaten