Aloha readers! I’ve been away for a few days and that has got a lot to do with it being finals week in university and the piled up submissions reordering my priorities. However, I did find some time to write a tale on this word.
Hope it is an interesting take as usual.
Well, like always, I begin with an apology for having stayed away for this long. My last post was all the way back in November. I’ve always wanted to keep this space alive and kickin’ but either couldn’t find the time or couldn’t find the motivation to write and so have been away for this long. I’m back now though, and with a topic on which I’ve been wanting to write since forever and have finally put together my thoughts. Hopefully I am more active here and have the drive to write and the content to share.
So today, I took the 5pm bus back home from university after a hectic day. There was an eerie silence and a strange calmness 15 minutes into the drive. I felt sleepy but was itching to write. I haven’t felt that in a long while, so who was I to question the desire. I succumbed and dived into my bag for my letter pad and my pencil and stared at the paper. Suddenly, I thought of the recent high-profile suicide case of Sunanda Pushkar, and remembered the Jiah Khan incident. I thought of how people give up and what causes the weakness. Just then from weakness, my mind drifted to the tangent topic of strength and I posed two questions to myself:
1. What is strength?
2. Who is the strongest person in the world?
I answered the second question in my head by contemplating the obvious. I first thought of some Arnold Schwarzenegger kind of man and thought that he would be one of the strongest people in the world. And then I thought to myself, “Is that really true? What actually is strength?”. Physical strength is actually the feebler judge of what you are made up of. The strength to endure is what defines your personality and is what gauges your overall strength. Physical strength is merely the Armani, worn by the pauper at heart to gain false appreciation.
Having figured out strength, I got back to contemplating who the strongest person in the world was. I could come up with just one answer, and almost instantaneously; a woman.
People who know me well may say that that judgement is coated with unnecessary sentiment, but hear me out.
In general, being a woman is the most thankless presence in the world. There are people with sick thought processes who refrain from conceiving a female child. They don’t even claim to be morally unjust when they kill the child on discovering the gender. The birth of a female child is considered to be unfortunate, insulting and even burdening; somehow never what it actually is – a blessing! True, that it doesn’t happen as much anymore and the modern society refrains from killing the girl child, but by no means does that imply that they treat children of both gender equally.
I’ve been asked on multiple occasions on whether I think that men are superior to women. I have always maintained that women are by far the superior beings and men can’t even come close, forget catch up, in comparison. There are undoubtedly men who know to shower love, who know to be kind, know to be compassionate and even know how to be appreciative. But sadly, a man’s best friend is his ego. He may be loving, kind, compassionate and appreciative, but he’s also the better one. Women don’t strive to prove that they are the better beings, they strive to convince the world to treat them as equals. That, in itself, makes them superior.
Today, women are equal, if not ahead of, men as far as the society’s status quo is concerned. There aren’t many jobs in the corporate world that men can do significantly better than women. With respect to the household, women are hands down winners. Yet, women are discriminated upon. Many young wives, equally qualified as their husbands, are asked not to work after marriage because they have to manage the household and “because they’re place is in the kitchen”. Want her to make you a sandwich? Well dear husband, she’ll actually finish your office work faster and better than you and even make you that sandwich out of sheer love, and she’d do all this much before you’re done stroking that well-groomed ego of yours.
I would openly challenge most men to juggle their lives as well as women do. Be it multitasking, taking care of the household, raising the children, enduring pain, and most importantly making sacrifices, women go through it all and without too much of a grumble. Women change their homes and change their names after marriage. Women make professional sacrifices when they conceive. Women make life sacrifices when they have children. They have to devote a huge chunk of their time to their children. They are the ones that go out of shape and have to work insanely hard to get back in shape. They go through surreal pain. All for what? For the sake of family. While in many cases, the man may be the bread-winner of the family, the real thankless job is the woman’s; that of having to run the household, taking care of the kids and also catering to her husband’s needs. And that is why they very rightly say that behind every successful man, there’s a woman.
Sadly, even in today’s day and age, I know of people who discriminate between the female and the male child. The male is treated with the best of life’s amenities while the female has to make-do with the relatively substandard. I know of cases where the male child is sent to the best foreign institution for university education while the female has to do with local education. Heck, I even know of cases where the female child isn’t allowed a cell phone or a driver’s license. That disgusts me. Man up, stop giving two hoots about what society thinks, give women equal opportunity and then sit back and watch them conquer the world.
I wrote the following lines on how I felt about women discrimination, and I hope it passes on the message clearly:
Today I opened my eyes Looking up at two teary faces They were different, our cries Mine joyous, theirs of gloom had traces I hoped for cheer, from the lady; my mother But silence was the lonely sound Two years later, she gave birth to my brother And her happiness knew no bounds What fault did my existence bear That for life, I be second best Why shouldn’t I feel the love, the care Was it one of life’s nasty tests? They mean the world to me The two I call mother and father Yet they would favor he The ones that called them names rather I was the smart one, always with aptitude Yet always the one provided with the sub-par Albeit, I never refrained from showing my gratitude Even though life had been tainted with a permanent scar They married me off, to this man Whose name, until a week back, I hadn’t known Be a good wife they said, you must, you can A door to a different home, they had shown Here too I was second best In the marriage, the man the better half All my hopes of equality were laid to rest Why am I, life, your victim for a laugh? And finally I gave birth to a daughter, my own And felt real happiness, it was a first I vowed to shower more love than I’d been shown To ensure her life wasn’t like her mother’s, cursed The tap of my heart leaked, emotion ran I was second to none, finally the best Until she met her groom, her man And life shoved me back to second best Now at sixty, having faced life, I wonder Are the times really changing or is it a stand still When will a female child stop being a blunder Will we ever reach the peak, or is it too steep, the climb up the hill? –x–I respect women immensely, and not without reason. Also, I don’t claim that men are pigs and don’t deserve credit for what they do. All this post tries to clear out is that women should be treated as equals and respected more because they are not only the reason for our existence, but are also, more often than not, the reason behind our happiness and well-being.
Lastly, I haven’t mentioned about the number of rape cases that are received because I find it absolutely disgusting that a man dares to do something that horrendous to a woman irrespective of what the circumstance maybe.
Zindagi Ka Safar 