No country for women...

This was just after we had heard the good news that my elder sister had a baby girl, as my father and I were stepping out of our apartment we bumped into a 'neighbour' (who I don't really like...and don't want to waste my energy hating him!!) and my father in all his enthusiasm and a broad smile, said, "Sonu ko ladki hui". Shuffling my feet and waiting at the landing outside my home, I watched agape as the neighbour exclaimed, "Tch Tch..!" I looked at him, horrified and disgusted. Perhaps my disgust reflected on my face, enough to get the neighbor to recover enough to say, "Arrey wah...badhai ho", my father squeezed my fingers that ached to slap the face of the Tching neighbour.

It has been over 4 years since that day, and today I am also a mother to a daughter. I come from a family full of girls.. I have two elder sisters and each one of us have girls. We are a proud family of girls! I wonder how the neighbour would have reacted when he heard the news of my daughter's birth...would he have spat out and laid clear his disdain of 'yet another girl being born'. Just for the record, the said "neighbour" is educated and is now enjoying a lazy retired life. So why am I bringing up this neighbour?Because he is one of the many people who believe in the second class status that seems to have been given to women in general. People like him need to change, they need to be understood, pitied even, to have such opinions about women.


It has been a few weeks now that I dread to watch the television news, for fear of being mentally cringed with news of women being beaten, thrashed, raped and killed. Many will say what is so new about this, women have been subjected to such violence the world over and India is no different, but every time any woman is subjected to any kind of violence, I find myself questioning time and again why are women victimized over and over again. And no I havent stopped watching the news or reading newspaper reports. I watch the news and read the newspaper reports because I want to remain angry. Does the anger help? Not really, but it makes me think, it ensures that I dont forget incidents and the victims don't just become statistics. I realize that if anything that needs to change within our country first and foremost is the way people like "the neighbour" and others who think like him, view 'women. Mindsets have to change. Our view towards tolerating violence of any kind has to change. Till such a overhaul of twisted mindsets happens, nothing is going to change.