Monday, December 12, 2011

Putting Education to the Right Use


O Women! When will you get out of the inhibited classified diminutive and defined world of the four walls of home and the freedom therein! I have been following the repertoire of the saas-bahus for the last two weeks in ‘The Hindu’ and their frustration inherited and inventoried from centuries. Educated and rational enough as we are, don’t you think its time we talked about the freedom accorded to our sisters and mothers for stepping out of their home and exploring the world outside? Freedom and acceptability mean nothing if our thinking is still confined to a shell casted by the enforced will of the parents and in-laws; restrictions at work and restrictions to work; and the social inhibitions of letting the bird fly and discovering the unknown lands. 
Lucky enough to be born in democratic and progressive families, getting the best education, living in tinsel towns and considering ourselves erudite enough to write about the petty day-to-day juggles with the saas or the bahu, as the case may be; we often forget that there is a world beyond; where there is no freedom of education, no development of rational faculties and no realization, that as human beings, certain rights are accorded automatically and need not be approved by the others. About a month ago, I visited a temple. What I witnessed there has been etched in my memory and I can’t help thinking about that incident everyday. The so called ‘pandit ji’ was seated on a comfortable chair with a king-like air about himself overseeing the devotees and his wife distributing the ‘prasad’ to them. Suddenly his phone rang and probably, one of his acquaintances had called up to seek advice about some puja from his wife. With her hands smeared in oil and with prasad, she politely told her husband to tell the caller to wait for her to call-back after she will be done with the distribution of the prasad. Absolutely annoyed by the effrontery and audacity to deny taking the call, he shouted at her in front of everybody as she ran mopping her hands with her dupatta to take the call. I stood there speechless and stunned, absolutely clueless about how to react. As a student, I may know how to apply the laws of motion, gravitation, and electromagnetism;  or the formulae of differentiation, integration and co-ordinate geometry, to reach to the solution of a problem but that day I stood helpless thinking of which law shall I apply to improve the lot of women in this country. This is such a small incident but it speaks volume about the way women are treated in the dark cosmos of their homes.
The story doesn’t end there. Hundreds of years of suppression and containment have made women apathetic towards their own plight. They consider it a way of life and probably, a pay-off for the original sin. And it surprises me to see how uninterested and listless are women about the predicaments of their fellow sisters. Through my own experiences and those of my friends, I know how girls in general, try to avoid working under a lady advisor for their completely rigid and standoffish way of dealing with things. And we should understand that it builds up as a consequence of constant struggle at home and outside to conquer even minor goals in life.
What we need today is to give women enough room to breathe. We must educate them, more than how to read and write, about the ways to assert their rights and experience their free will.  All of our education is a waste of time, money and efforts if we are unable to bring a change in the lives of the oppressed lot. I guess, deliberations over the ways in which we, as women, can contribute to the cause of women, would be more useful than just opining our frustrations over the sorry state of affairs. 

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Neglecting my Negligence

I have been keeping all my trinkets as a memoir of my guileless childhood, dragging it all the way with me; rather than ever thinking of disposing them off to the street children playing in my backyard. Fearful of the brunt of the mutilations this big-bad-going-worse world can inflict on my sensitivity, I thought to conserve the few ‘beautiful aspects of childhood’ I managed to save in ‘ME’. Unaware of the potential effects of my negligence towards those who strive without even a single square meal a day, I am mistakably happy and contended at my own callous disposition.

I would feel proud to be the saviour of the victims of merciless pogrom and terrorism, who grope in dark for a single, no matter how bleak, a ray of hope; but I am too busy to look at those unfortunate souls importuning for help. I have been witnessing the dreadful slaughter of a man’s most prized possession, his ego, when I see a pauper begging; but in search of my own comforts, I kept knocking out the questions my conscience kept uttering to me. I have been party to help encourage exploitation of small little waifs when I give my unspoken consent to those who employ children in mangy places to do some menial work. I endorse the opinion of those who eve-tease women, by overlooking the incident not to show my vulnerable hurt side. After all, I am too ordinary and decrepit an individual to make a difference to this dithering world. . (And may be that is the reason I consciously ignore to empathise with those in the hour of need).

In time, surely I’ll think.. surely, I’ll have some compunction, but right now, I am too entangled in this idée fixe of self! I would rather look wistfully at those ranking above me in the echelon of this material world, coveting on the luck ordained by others and thinking, how beautiful my life is, neglecting my negligence!

(No denying, in some corner of his heart, every other man in this world considers himself a victim of moral degeneration of the society that he finds difficult to sustain and a product of the perpetual strangulation of his principles to keep up with the progressing brutal times.
But amidst these sorry states of affairs, we tend to forget that somehow our negligence contributes a great deal to the society as a whole. )

The Inherent Virtue


Human beings have a limitless capacity to love. It is said that if there is one thing that keeps us going in life, it’s the hope. But if we boil down to the basic elements of this ‘hope’, we would know that it stems out of our innate capability to continue to accept eccentricities and beauty of various aspects of life, living and inanimate, and allowing them to consume some part of our attention, affection and life-energy.
We are continually bombarded with numerous objects carrying some energy for a mutually beneficial or a detrimental exchange. The last thing we are capable of is to unilaterally ignore all of them. We always live with some sense of what is called as ‘relative deprivation’ and look for those facets which can complete us from within. The diverse elements of life that we come across have a potential of bringing in a phase of ‘judgment’ where we tend either to assimilate or ignore them. In any case, our basic instinct towards those elements which seem to broaden our understanding of ourselves, and give us an experience of the idiosyncrasies and magnificence of life; is that of an embrace and assimilation. Its only when the mind reigns in, that we tend to ignore and move on. But there are even times, when on perceiving an object that inadvertently grabs our attention; we apprehend the depriving factors in us.
Life moves on the wheels of emotions. Either we control them or they control us. In either case, our motion on the path that we choose to traverse is made possible only because of mutual acceptance between us and the path. We slowly accept what is offered to us and look for newer avenues that the path has in store for us. The hope to achieve more and seek more keeps us in the state of fluidity which is somehow characterized by our limitless capacity to love (and assimilate).
How does this virtue help us reach our destination and whether we reach there at all, is for the time to show us…