If You Can’t Give Her Wings, At Least Don’t Seal Her Lips

The much hyped about “Girl child Day’ was celebrated on January 24th but what is the nuance of such a day? So much is being done to prevent incidents of female infanticides, child marriages and woman child education, but what about women who enter the world, get education and parry the blow of getting married before 18?

The inevitable happens. People start making decisions for her. From her mere identity at birth, school she goes to, clothes she wears, friends she makes, levels of education she can be morally supported through, to her surname. What else is left of a woman who is born? In a country where marriages are believed to last forever, no choice is given to the woman who lives.

Our country talks about sorting problems on a larger scale, problems that seem much graver than the trivial matters that involve a woman. There is an obvious link between the problems in society and the women who live here are seen. Blind are those who see her dreams shatter in the effort of making her parents’ come true, deaf are those who fail to hear her cries for true independence and dumb are those who see and hear but fail to talk about it.

I am not qualified enough to take such a sensitive subject and make open judgments, but what I have felt is what I will write. I am a journalist and I believe in using my freedom of speech.

Aaliya Nathan (name changed to protect identity) was a happy go lucky child, who went to the best of girls’ schools in the city. When she was eight, she was sexually abused by a distant relative, the act that continued for years. Her inability to understand what was happening, the taboo around topics related to men and women as a couple and her lack of knowledge pertaining to the opposite sex prevented her from talking about it to her parents. She grew withdrawn from her family and starting showing an unpalatable hatred towards men in the family and the mother to whom the abuser was related.

Aaliya spoke to nobody because of the fear of being judged as the trouble maker. To her, the family was the cause of her pain and constant guilt, but her parents failed to see it behind those innocent smiles. At 19, her parents started pushing her to get married, fearing that the withdrawn girl would commit crimes more serious than just aloofness.

Today Aaliya is just another wild woman in town, she rebelled against marriage, went dancing with her friends, loved drinking and driving, but also someone who constantly kept her eye open for someone to love her. Nobody could deny that were many more Aaliyas in India, women who were never heard but who were always told.

Why was it so difficult to listen to children without wearing a judge’s hat? This was a question that many parents forgot to ask themselves, before slowly pushing adolescent daughters into suicides and homicides. A home must be a place where any subject could be discussed to any intensity without harsh impulsive implications attached to it. When the home was a place where there was trust and unconditional love sans judgments, no child ventured out into the dark alleys of premarital sex and substance abuse. If parents put in a small effort to change this trend, bigger problems like HIV, murders, alcoholism, accidents and rapes in the country would also plummet a great deal. In short, if you can’t give her wings, at least don’t seal her lips.

New Era Gandhian

I always thought that a person who runs away from a confrontation or an argument was a coward, but I am reconsidering my brash judgment. In the last two months, I lost a best friend, an ex fiancé and today I lost another best friend. It is easier to think that a natural calamity took their lives away, but the bitterness that oozes out of a broken relationship is non existent in the case of the irreversible finality.

Why is the human mind built in a way that to push a person out of their mind, the umbrella of hate is sheltered under? Some people spread bitterness and some accept defeat. I am the one who accepts bitterness as though it has always been my forte. My parents shed a few tears and suddenly the girl who spent her entire lifetime cover up for her shit has become the bad one? I don’t understand how the mind functions. I am in the search of finding how people react to various situations in life. The amount of tears I have shed through a love relationship goes unnumbered, but the tears shed by others become invaluable?

How can people who call themselves ‘friends’ be so biased against their own friends? I have always asked so many questions, but the answers come so much later in life that the discovery/epiphany hardly matters. Today the ‘friend’ continues talking about my broken engagement thousands of miles away from me, why? I presume that talking about me was a decent enough conversation starter. Whether I am good or bad does not matter now – I must rejoice that I am an interesting piece of flesh.

The most important questions in a friendship at three different stages are “How is the person with other people?” which is a question that rules pre-friendship stages, “What does the person do for you?” which is asked when the person is your friend and is in close proximity and “What does the person say behind your back about you when far away?” which is the ultimate test of friendship.

I am a person who believes that a person cannot question the moral liability of another person – be it if the person decides to end an engagement or walk out of a marriage. What I would do in a situation like this is to weigh out the pros and cons of the various cases and let the final call be a conscious decision of the respective person. My personal life has become a joke to everybody – some people think I gave it up for another man and some people think I became overly ambitious overnight – but at the end of the day, the word spreads.

Higher beings say that one must not care two hoots about the society and that is the way of life and spiritual freedom, but what can be done if the social reputation builds a firmer ground for tomorrow’s bread and butter? In my case, I was going to stay with a friend of mine in NYC, before he broke to me that he was upset that I misrepresented something he had said about the ‘friend’ under speculation.

The truth about my story is that I introduced the NYC friend to my ‘friend’ because they had a lot of things common – this is not the worst part of the story. Today, I felt like nothing less than one of those prostitutes on the leery streets of New York City. My friend, for half a decade, told me that he did not want me to stay over at his place even if it was a for a few days because he was scared of the ripples of rumors that would travel through many ears in his friends circle. Though uncontrollable tears rolled down my cheeks, I realized that I was happier to ‘unfriend’ such negative factors in my life from thousands of miles away, rather than get closer in proximity and pull the plug eventually. What a learning experience, and in the process what a revelation – I am the new era Gandhian.