By Manvi Malhotra Last Updated:
In today’s time, when gender equality and feminism are its peak, everyone is busy finding instances in our society, where women have to give up something or the other for the sake of satisfying societal norms.
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There are many such things that women have been doing since time immemorial, but one major thing that most ladies give up is their name after marriage. They usually take up their husband’s name, and even change their first name sometimes.
Off late, many modern women have stopped this practice of taking up their husband’s last name. They retain their maiden names and their identities. But this is not surprising and in fact it should not be. The real surprise comes when a person does something which nobody has ever thought of doing. This is the case with this unique couple, Kermin Bhot and Abhishek Mande Bhot. Did you notice anything different? Well yes, it is the names.
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Kermin and Abhishek got married around 4 years back. And after their wedding, Abhishek decided to take up Kermin’s last name. Surprising, right? Not just that, Kermin is older to Abhishek and earns a lot more money than him. But these factors never phased him. When asked why he decided to change his last name, his wife swiftly replied during an interview:
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“I suspect Abhishek’s education in women’s rights and the fact that he has always been surrounded by strong women made it easier for him to accept the age and salary factor, as well as the fact that I didn’t need a knight in shining armour to rescue me. He is very passionate about women’s rights and at one point he would go to lengths trying to explain why this was important. Over the years, though, he’s given up explaining. To journalists who interview him, he says he changed his name because he wanted to. He says that he had the option of continuing with his own name or choosing to take mine and he chose the latter. It was really quite as simple as that, he insists.”
Abhishek has always been a very strong supporter of women’s rights and the subject is very close to his heart. While Kermin is a true-blue Parsi, Abhishek is from a Maharashtrian family. Their upbringing has been poles apart, but what brought them together were their similar beliefs and set of values. Here is what Kermin said about the same:
“My husband and I have an inter-religious marriage. He’s a Hindu, while I’m a Parsi—two communities as far apart as they can get. I was raised in a Parsi household in South Mumbai on a staple of American and British pop culture and he was born and raised in the distant suburbs of the city in a middle-class Maharashtrian household. Add to that the fact that I was older and earning more than him and one might think we had a recipe for disaster. But while there were differences, there was also a lot of common ground—our core beliefs and thoughts were the same.”
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Men like Abhishek are rare to find. He is like an idol for all the men today. It is obviously not necessary to change one’s last name to prove a point, but it just shows that he supports gender equality. They are the ones who can bring about change in the society. We are glad Kermin and Abhishek are the flag-bearers of a positive change.