A Chronicle of a Million Girls

She opens her eyes to smiling faces. To a world of joy and innocence. She becomes a daughter, a niece and plays so many roles along the path of life. She dawns the role of a wife and mother too. She gives life and she nurtures it. She makes a million sacrifices all along. She laughs, she cries, adds a hint of drama and loves unconditionally. She is getting old but she doesn’t lose her ability to love and sacrifice endlessly for the ones she loves. She is gentle but she is strong. She is loving but she is strict. She knows how to care but she also knows how to fight back for justice.

This is the life of a woman and this is the power of what a single soul can do. I don’t have enough words to describe the word “woman”. She is an epitome of power with generosity. Or is she?

A country like India worships the 9 forms of Goddesses Durga for 18 days a year and the same country crushes the rights of a woman to even breath freely. A woman is repeatedly told the ‘rules and regulations’ to live, sorry correction, to survive in the society. She is told what to wear, how to talk and how to walk. She is repeatedly humiliated and teased for no reason. She can’t wear what she wants, she can’t speak up for her rights and she is not listened to. All this because the men of the society keep exclusive rights to turn her life into a living hell if she ‘crosses the line’. She weeps in a corner waiting for a ray of hope that is never going to turn up.

The men? Oh no, they don’t need any rules because THEY make them. The men of the society are free. They can talk about anything, they can go anywhere and most importantly do anything they want. They pass crude comments on women, follow them and RAPE them.

The Government? They watch the drama unfold before their eyes with a bucket of popcorn. Women are not considered first citizens of the country, so they don’t have equal rights either. Only writing with black ink doesn’t help and that is sadly the case with India. We are the world’s biggest democracy and we are the world’s biggest myopic fools. We wait until the situation gets out of hand and then give interviews on the T.V for useless footage. Yes, we are that dumb.

India is in a sad state right now as far as women’s safety is concerned. The main reason being the number of rapes happening in the country and the alarming number of rape cases still pending in the court. The figure is 95,000. Does it astonish you? It doesn’t astonish me because I know that these are just a small fraction of the huge number that accompany this monstrous act.

It leaves me sad, aggravated and largely scared. I live in the capital of the biggest democracy of the world and I am not safe. So I don’t feel the need to go to the small towns to show you the scary picture of this male dominated society that India is. A medical student was raped recently and she died. Her death brought a revolution in the country of sleeping souls. People felt so unsafe and so angry that they came out on the roads in millions. There were candle light marches, protests and speeches. The momentum is still there. Nobody is ready to let go the tragedy that happened a fortnight back.

But the Government acted in the usual and predictable manner. Stopped the protests, closed the roads and any means of transport that could allow people to unite. India is divided in two halves, the politicians and the people. Sadly people don’t understand this fact. The shouting of slogans and peaceful marches isn’t going to help in the long run. A law will be passed for our security, then what? Everything goes back to where it was.

Maybe everybody knows that but they are too saddened and angry to sit at home. The anger has finally come out and a revolution like no other is witnessed in this democracy. Second to the freedom fight that took place decades back. WE have to unit, WE have to think and only WE have to act intelligently. That lost life will never come back but that life taught millions of Indians something that they will remember till the end of their lives.

Every victim weeps with tears of blood. Isn’t she a human being? Why is she treated as an object and not as a human?