It’s been a while since I have written a blog post. While I would like to blame the fast-paced Mumbai life for
keeping me away from writing, deep down I know it’s more to do with the lack of
anything worth writing, coming to my mind.
As I lay in my bed after my first
surgery unable to sleep and scroll through Quora and Facebook, one thing that surely
makes me cringe is the new found love of my fellow male brethren to become the
quintessential preacher and spread oppressive & utterly regressive ideas on
the fairer sex of the society.
So these days I wake up to the ‘news’
of an honourable minister ‘skirting’ issues about what our foreign atithis
should wear while, ironically, another country does not let its guest cover up and goes on to ban ‘Burkhinis’. Everyone who has even a pea-sized
brain tries to explain that the reason behind assault on women is the women
herself - because of her dressing, because she uses a cellphone or because she
drinks or smokes! Sigh! I wear shorts and roam about the city and wonder why it
is not considered as ‘dropping hints’ inviting girls to hit on me!
It isn’t the atrocious statements made by ignorant
self-proclaimed buffoons that bothers me as
most of them are hungry for muft-ki-publicity. But what worries me more is that
there are still a lot of educated and urban men who feel men and women are unequal
and carry overbearing thoughts towards them. While it’s considered completely
okay for a man to sneer at a girl, if a girl does the same, people are quick to
judge her character. It’s okay for a man to drink or smoke, but why does it
have to be a sin if a girl does the same? Why is it okay for a man to have a
past but the woman he marries should be ‘sanskaari’ and ‘pure’? If a woman with
a past is not ‘pure’, the man involved in her past is equally ‘asanskaari’.
It all boils down to this –
changing the rules of the society that men have set in their head. It’s no
longer just about respecting women, it’s about giving them the freedom to be
independent and be on par with men. No matter how many programs we have for ‘Naari
Shakti’, till the time we do not change the mindset of the people, there is
little hope for achieving equality in the society. It pains me when I see some
of my friends and family hold obnoxious opinions and pass judgements against
women. There is very little I can do, except for apologising to the women lot, who
continue to reel under the oppressive patriarchal society that we live in.
Guys, time to seriously
introspect…
