Author: PrettyPiscean

‘Wo’Man, I am purposefully saying it this way, to deliberately sound like a feminist… (I am just kidding). The Word Woman has many perceptions and assumptions built around it. Presumptions are not limited to Men alone, they are from the same gender as well. When we say a Wo-Man specially on Woman’s Day; it sounds like Wonder Woman on such occasions. It might be true it might be not, this is and always be debatable.

Since Vedic ages, each of our cultures have Goddesses in them who have played vital roles in developing civilizations, continuing the tradition until today. We are witnesses of this world, watching women excel in leadership in roles in most prominent fields like Defence, Foreign Relationships, Arts & Literature, Medical and much more.

Here today I stand in front of you, to represent Woman and to put forward my life in front of you. This I do not know will help me today or not. However, this hopefully should help the future generations where hopefully equality will prosper.

Women are often portrayed either Strong or Weak or a Mother, a Sister, a Friend, a Girlfriend, Wife and much more. But instead of all this could we just consider her a Human for a while. Just not wander off to conclusions and mark territories or lines of demarcations for her. Define her role within her own Life, Office, Home and many other places. 

No matter what age, role, responsibility they play in today’s time, the fact remains that they are still invisible in this world. Their contributions are recognized only of those special days. Their existence is appreciated only in terms to be spoken in some speech, by someone, someday.

I am not here to claim, dictate or preach anything about how we are treated, what should be done, what can be done, if I even want to be noticed or just disappear into the crowd. I stand here just to say that I am a human after all. No matter what happens tomorrow or any other day I exist for myself and those alike me. I strive for myself and those alike me. I do not ask for permissions, freedom, space and all. All I request you is to take a step back and let me breathe and just be me. A woman that I am, let me learn to cherish myself first. Only then, maybe then, I would expect the same from the world. Hopefully someday, no woman in the future would have to take a stand in front of everyone to define herself and seek permission to be just herself and nothing more or nothing less.

A big controversial topic which might not even go well with the people. This is a topic which people might come back to me saying that this should not have been touched. Please consider this just a few words of mine drafted in a string on a page. Call them thoughts call them phrase.

I had been to visit Tirupati a few months back. The preparations for the trip and its booking started some 4 four months prior to the trip. There are many reservations which we must get done to just visit the temple. There was a time when temples were always open to all. Now we must make bookings for the same for every kind.

Like the real life, we have reservation classes train class, flight class, reservation quota etc. Now even for temples which is the very base of our culture has classes like Savra Darshan (normal visitation), Special Darshan (special visitation). Then you have the VIP and Super VIP as well.

In a culture like India where religion has too much influence on the population there should be a standard set or the sense of equality to prevail. Some places the reservations should not be considered. When people come over from all the places to obtain blessings and to attain inner peace and a way to progress, the demarcation of the crowd depending upon their source of meals do not matter.

Maybe if we just respect the feelings, the desperation of the desperate that would help the cause in a better way. When I say all this, I am honestly being a hypocrite, as I would prefer the earliest getaway possible.

However, the only thing I would like to change would be the moments given to a person to look at the idol for a while at least until the charge paid to you is refunded in terms of mental peace and satisfaction of seeing and being with the idol for a while.

Marriages are a costly affair specially in India. Other than the Bride & the Groom everyone else is involved with much more enthusiasm. This enthusiasm cost a heavy price specially when things do not work out.

As per general traditions, I was also married to someone the family found. Like every typical arranged marriage, things went ahead We met, we liked each other, thought that we might make a good couple and moved on taking the next step. Then finally came the D-day and soon the grand affair was over. Over the next year we realized that we could not see anything eye-to-eye and hence as most of the marriages these days, he called it quits and I had not much choice here and I moved back. This story is not a sob story of what the break up. It is more on what happens next.

When a girl gets married she gets all the rights that a married woman has, attending Puja’s, she would be invited into different functions and would be given certain amount of respect. People start noticing her as soon as she is married, for the first years she would be a part of all the family get together, all the small events and the various puja’s and fasts and so on. There is a lot many rituals that come across her way when the Mangalsutra is worn by her.

Now a days, being into the marriage, finding someone who would accept you the way you are, not trying to change you for their betterment or for your worse is impossible. ‘Divorce’ now a days is more than common. People have lost the will to be not give up easily. Six months and plans are hatched to get rid of the other one. Maybe the generation is moving to fast & in a blur to realize  what one might miss ahead. In all of this what happens of the bride who was accepted and given rights for all the rituals and now suddenly she has been revoked of all the rights because the ‘Divorce’ came into the picture. There is already a change in the bride’s life trying to scope up with the recent & new expectations and Demands. When one day things start to fall rapidly even before one can understand the waves of change come in & made her the Bride without a Husband.

The outlook of the people changed. The very same people who treated her like a Goddess now ignore her like a widow, The rituals are not for her anymore, the respect will not come her way anymore. The whispers behind her back are carried by the winds to her ears, making her doubt her very own existence. In such a scenario, where she has a husband who no longer says that she is his, who is very much alive, who she thinks of everyday, how is she to take the tides of Change again? We as a society have not changed at all. Living in the 21st century holding onto values of the ancient is only making life more than difficult than what it actually it should be. The respect for the fallen one is needed after all, the journey of restarting everything all over again is more than painful.

This is something we all need to think about on many levels. Maybe a change in a thought will make a huge change in someone’s life in the future.

It was just a usual weekday morning where I was at the dining table with my got cup of coffee and the morning newspaper. While going through the paper a headline caught my eye that a 27 year of was raped by the same Taxi Driver while she was on her way home after availing the cab service of the same provider. This was a very reputed cab company, but it had a record of such similar incident earlier as well. At reading it in a little more detail, it was pretty clear tar the company had failed to conduct the background checks for their hired employee. The girl had to pay the price of someone else’s irresponsibility. Her life is completely ruined.

Putting a little more thought into this scenario, it made me realize that the value of the girl’s life & her reputation is equal to nothing. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened neither would it be the last. But have we put a thought is to why is this happening? How is it possible, that the gender which is capable of bringing a new life to this very world has to fear for her own life at times? Is her life this expendable? Why is it that the girls have completely lost their respect& the value of their own existence? Where did this gender fail? Like the usual reasons, please do not even attempt to tell me that this happens because of the way the girls dress up & all. I find this argument not even worth a second of my thinking time.

I have a theory regarding the entire cliché. Knowing that my mind is a wanderer, it went all the way back well into the mythological era in hopes to get a clue of the beginning of the patriarchy revolution. I think this all became very prominent from the Ram Rajya, i.e. the Ramayana. You all would be like ‘WTF is she talking about’. But seriously, try and recall the entire Ramayana and then stop at the point where a lower class Dhobi (washer man) had asked the King (Ram) regarding the purity of his Queen (Sita). This doubt came into existence because she was abducted by Ravana and kept as a prisoner for quite some time (at least the time they finished constructing the bridge). I remember my childhood when my grandmother used to tell me Ramayana (mostly to keep me away from the Disney stories) I always used to wonder why would even one think about such a thing. How could someone else even think like this about a person knowing that they have come back after a huge fight? How does the physical part of the body has anything to do with purity? What happens about the person’s heart, feelings, the intimacy they shared? The biggest question which still remains unanswered is that Why didn’t she refuse?

Coming back to our Sita, she did stand firmly with her husband at all times. Please do not forget similar to Ram she was also from the royal family, a princess. She willingly spent all the years with Ram in his ‘Vanvas’. I agree that she got kidnapped and all, but they were just a series of unfortunately accidents which landed her into huge amount of trouble. But then her knight who wasn’t exactly a Knight in Shining Armor but rather a leader of monkey army did come and rescue her and took her to their rightful home. But what did she get after coming home, she was forced to give Agneepariksha to prove her purity. Which leads to my basic question, how to prove purity of a person? I never understood why Ram never defended Sita to the Dhobi. Didn’t she prove that she loved him in those 14 years? Wasn’t she the one who walked away leaving all the luxuries of the palace for a life with him? Let us for a say that he was forced to question her. She should’ve refused to give Agneeparisksha. Like she was alone in some other land so was he, making him also doubtful in her mind, although this thought never occurred to her.

I feel that when she accepted to give the Agneeparisksha she just made her gender the weaker one who would be again and again forcefully made to bend by the opposite gender. We would be forced into following the rules created by Men. I think if it weren’t for this incident Patriarchy would not have existed up to this extent and major population would have lived under the umbrella of equality. We all would be living in a different world where the Women/Girls would be treated with much more respect.

Hence I say that She Should Have Refused. It would have saved a lot of lives today.