FEMINISM

Canopy of men cover us, and simultaneously throw all the paint on our face as if we be the canvas. After all, who doesn’t like to be colored? But a deeper question is, who likes to be colored in someone else’s preferred shades? I love blue. My father and all my brothers and all my uncles and all my male friends compel me to splash myself into red because they like it. Shouldn’t I disown them all? They keep an eye on me perpetually to ensure that no one raises their eye over me. Dear men (of this nature), take your eyes off me and you’ll solve half of our problems. Otherwise, rehne do… tumse naa ho paega (leave it… you won’t be able to stop it). We’re innate of a nation where harming a cow is a non-bailable offence and raping a woman has to be proved as an offence first (which takes approximately 7 years in the court) and after this, punishment can be abated on bail.

Feminism isn’t about asking a housewife to work to ‘earn’ a living. It is about allowing the women in your house to make their own choices. It revolves around allowing a wife to go childless if she doesn’t look forward to be a mother and comfort her with the thought that her decision doesn’t make her any less of a woman. It disseminates around those fathers who take fatherhood seriously. They don’t tell their sons, “Don’t be such a girl!” when they shed a few tears or wince in pain. It flings around raising men as human beings with a genderless soul and not as responsibility deprived tumors grown around a penis. It flings from the hearts of those people who don’t mock a girl with hair growth on her body barring head, if she fancies not shaving them off. Feminism isn’t about coercing women to take up sports, or fire on that runway. It’s about countenancing them to be the hell they’re instinctively and pull it off for a lifetime.

And did anyone notice where I ruined that feminism till now? When I say “allowing the women”, “countenancing them” and so on; I make myself sound a hypocrite. Why should they seek for consent?!! They shouldn’t.

More than any other nation, India needs feminism because if a girl can’t cook she shouldn’t have to. India needs feminism because a bride shouldn’t pay (read: dowry) a guy to marry her. India needs feminism because Indian women should realize that you can like a man a whole lot and still turn around and say a NO to him. Remember, a good woman knows her worth. She should know whether there’s any potential of growth together or not.

Above all, it is for the so called fairer sex to cognize that they’ve much more to offer to the world than stay bogged down by not being labelled as pretty or beautiful. Stay faithful yet detached. Stay committed yet relaxed. Love everyone and yet no one. Stay gentle and yet tough. Stay passionate and platonic. In short, stay predictable in your unpredictability. Stay obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in your own skin.

Conclusively, I apologize to all the women whom I’ve called pretty before calling them brave or resilient. I made it sound like something you’re born with is the most you’ve to be proud of. Being a woman, I’m well aware that your heart must have crushed mountains on so many occasions and you would’ve chuckled on the outside during the trying times. I don’t mean to say that you aren’t pretty but what I mean to establish as a way of life is you’re so much more than that.

A weak man can never keep a strong woman, he doesn’t know what to do with her and a real woman can do it all by herself but a real man won’t let her. A woman who doesn’t ask for anything deserves everything.

THE MISOGYNIST GOD AND BLASPHEMY

As I squatted down chewing the graphite of my pencil, mulling over the paper, the unsung sagas of the sources of life: WOMEN, my mind worked like the shaft of a motor's rotor, not able to adjudge the beginning and termination of the woeful vicious circles.

We are brought up in a land where every natural water body is considered pious and has a tale to tell, and the innumerable peaks are considered to be the abodes of various mythological heroes(I doubt their divinity though).

So today I meditated about the above highlighted theme, in accordance with the perennial reverberations on "Women's safety and empowerment" by the news channels who are selling it like hot cakes and cold beer), I thought of reacquainting myself with certain "facts of the matter" while treading on this topic. These news channels vociferate that the wincing cries in pain of women are heard by the deaf ears of 'the government and police', and hence they have to undergo meticulous scrutinization yielding in myriad stigmas on their personalities.

But I claim for their innocence in such cases, and interrogate every complainant that in a nation where women are coveted to be goddesses: the banks of wisdom and the drains of wealth. Why should such divine creatures pull out pepper sprays from their kitchen shelves and use it for self-defense from the delirious beasts instead of just using it for seasoning their pasta?

Why is the biological layout of a woman such that it surpasses through layers of lewd comments and fear in the hearts and minds of women whenever they engage in flings? Why are they the ones who lack in physical endurance and strength and have to creep over a guy (Be it even a bodyguard let alone father, brother, husband etc) in hours of calamities and endless sufferings? When we are preached to be committed to only one being in our lives via the religious texts then why do we worship the gods who practiced polygamy?, put at stake their wife while gambling? It is just because we all are gigantic hypocrites who are corroding the society and its dwellers so mildly that we won't realize it till one day, the dawn breaks itself directly into dusk, yes, I mean it, with dearth of sunshine.

Police can never ever be vigilant enough to break the shackles of houses and catch the rapists red hand. It's the all mighty-almighty who can and he's probably relishing such events and that's why we still have to look for scapegoats in the patrolling and the governance.

It's He who has made female a second sex and it is in his name that we manifest women equivalent to several goddesses and the giver of life.

I would wrap it up with one short story: Few days ago I came across a mother consoling her two year old son by saying that "why don't you let me dress up smartly by being quiet ....aren't you interested in luring girls in school?".

And that's where we as humans are wrong, yes, there...where Women (that mom in this case) don't respect themselves. .

Without a doubt that child was clueless about what his mom said but the sad part is that he will grow up under her guidance and one day imbibe from her that girls are meant to be lured, to be treated as sex objects, and even that day without a pinch of hint of what's going on, he will obey his mother and trust her blindfolded.

I ask, where is the boy wrong?  We all are raised by our parents, taught what they wished us to learn and where was the scope in our formative years to doubt our parents' upbringing?

But I know that, 20 years later, we will blame that boy for being an animal, but what else can a being be bereft of the one he is trained to be?