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.

WOMEN CAN’T HAVE IT ALL‼

Speaking broadly, I’m just too hardcore a feminist to enunciate my write-up with a title like this one. So quite obviously, the title can’t be a product of my thoughts but the nomenclature of the manufacturer of this thought would probably send an electric spark down to your nerves like it did too mine.

The CEO of PepsiCo India, Indra Nooyi notoriously voiced the above titled emotions while being awarded for her prodigious excellence in one of the ceremonies. At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Colorado when she took over the stage, there were business tycoons and men/women from the press alike in galore bracing themselves up to lend their ears to something worthwhile being stressed upon from the podium. India’s most successful woman entrepreneur, till then, was being viewed by flocks of women as a powerhouse, as the Harry Potter who had got all clandestine revealed about the success mantra, as Sherlock Holmes who had spied long at the mysteries behind being efficacious efficaciously, as Dan Brown who had cracked Da Vinci Code tediously, or simply put as a laborious businesswoman in-apprehensive of what her genetic coding (i.e. being a woman) says.

The boss, who is a mother of two, further extended her views, saying that she died with guilt over compromises she had to make to balance career and family life. With a stellar career, £7.3 million salary and a 34 year long marriage, statistics flatter enough to deceive her statements though. She insists that women can only pretend to have it all. She says that every day is a choice that in parallel to being a CEO, shall she be a mother today or a wife. Sometimes, during the day itself the decision has to be amended over again and again.

She had put light on how uncooperative her spouse had been, which fundamentally turned things sour as the onus lied on Indra solely. He complained every now and then of her work priorities. Sadly, he failed to understand that you can’t become a million dollar baby with a minimum wage work ethic. Sadly enough, in defiance to Indra Nooyi I would say that ‘no one has it all’ in reality. Ms. Nooyi, trust me, everyone just pretends to have it all. Right from the morning, every day is a choice between whether to stay in bed for a couple of minutes more and laze or to get up a decade of minutes earlier and grind. You just can’t have it all. It is the law of the land, you win some; you lose some.

Wrapping it all up, I would culminate by just hoping that all women get better better-halves over Mr. Raj (Indra’s husband), because settling down for lesser things in life can’t be an option for the ambitious lot of women.

CHANGING FACET OF SPORTS IN INDIA

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!.. Well, Jack is not the only follower of this age-old adage, everyone abides by it. The commonwealth games of 2010 for me, were the enunciation of a revolution in India that swept the youth in the wave of the sporting culture. Delhi hosted the games, just as the deja vu of Melbourne, Sydney or of the Olympics in London, Beijing is and maybe a notch higher than that.

When a city, even better, a capital city gets to host a gigantic international event at more than a dozen of venues; all ushering a world-class infrastructure and the media does its part of covering it, business tycoons do come up with endorsements and sponsorships for players..... and all of this, when watched by a young kid in the stadium, boosts him/her up for an encore of their heroes. They get excited to fill in the big shoes of the person, who stands on the podium making his/her countrymen proud.

To top it all, the government of India envisages to honour sportspersons with quotas in government jobs, housing, attractive cash prizes, facilities in sporting aids and so on. Apart from this, by playing sports one gets to tour the world and experience it , under their own terms. The health benefits are well-adhered to sports and are renowned.

In ground reality, the pleasing fact is the growing likelihood of parents to send their kids to one or the other sports academy and expecting fructious outcomes from it. Thankfully, gone are the days when playing and enjoying oneself was termed as a waste of time.. and the mentality was tagged as 'a typical Indian one'. Schools and colleges simulate to be the launching pad to enthrust the young athletes into the orbit of a successful career in sports, layered with self-belief and passion. The coming up of sponsors in the sports has belligerently magnified the financial growth of players, sports associations, sports officials, sports coaches, enterprises that invest in matches and tournaments, travel industry, hotel industry, principal food and beverage partners, and so many more technicians and others who work behind the lenses for covering live matches, publicising them and so on.

From broadcasting rights to the logo of several franchise teams; everything is now epitomised as the national symbol in domestic households. The most placid part is that, it's just not cricket this time. IPL was the brain-child of a man who was thrown out of his very own start-uo just as Steve Jobs once was from Apple Inc. : Lalit Modi. Hockey India League, Badminton Super Series,Football League, Kabbadi League, Wrestling League and the Tennis Series are all signs of not a wave but a tornado! And this tornado isn't a disaster but a saviour.

History tells us that SOCIETY is one thing in the world that exists right from the time of civilisation and makes a heck of it. It kills millions of dreams day in and day out, and being a professional athlete is one of them.

On a good note, it feels great to look up at Sania Mirza or Saina Nehwal being treated as the dolls of the nation. It's incredible to learn that MC Mary Kom will soon have a movie dedicated to her name. It's impreganable to know that Deepika Kumari is the world's numero uno archer. When Gagan Narang or Abhinav Bindra gathers the gold in Asian and Olympic games respectively, and Vijendra Singh and Sushil Kumar seize silver and bronze in the Olympics, then the self-belief of aspiring youngsters rise up. When the nation looks upto Baichung Bhutia's retirement not as the end of an era, but the as the start of a legacy, then the human heart gets thrilled with joy and novel enthusiasm in the air. And then the heart and the mind unanimously utter, “There's still a little good in the world, and that is worth fighting for!”.

For an athlete, sports isn't fun. Ask any of them, most of them hate it,but they play because they couldn't imagine their life without it. Its part of them, the love/hate relationship. Its what they live for. They live for the practices, parties, cheers, long bus rides, invitationals, countless pairs of different types of shoes, water, Gatorade and coaches you hate but appreciate. They live for the way it feels when they beat the other team, and knowing those two extra sprints they ran in practice worth it. They live for the way they become a family with their team, they live for the countless songs they sing in their head while training all those hours. They live for the competitions, for their friends, the practices, the memories, the pain, its who they are. Its who we are.

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?