IT IS really atrocious and unbecoming to find today’s TV anchors in dress codes that are not only alien to our native culture, but also detrimental to our very sartorial tradition. Since the time we have been living, we have a tendency of calculating everything in terms of money. TV channels, producers and programme generators are very much aware that air time is the costliest of times, and if failed to invite maximum attention in such times of extreme market value, their very profession would be devoured by competing channels that go to any extent to win a few points in the viewership index they manipulate to hoodwink their clientele.
It is this monetary mentality that goes into the making of these anti-social dress codes, obscene body languages and disgusting language affectations. Sorry to say, we do not have a native language, we do not a have a dress code and we do not have a set of socially accepted facial expressions. We take pride in the mixes: Mixes of dresses, languages and mannerisms.
Think of a popular TV anchor. A pair of low-waist trousers, precariously adorned with the help of a belt that is much longer than the waist-circumference, and a couple of the most comfortable fingers thrust into its front pockets. And not to forget a made up face, and top it all - a language that is sufficient enough to shake any listener’s normal thinking process. This is the appearance of an ordinary TV anchor, who hosts a programme or a talk show. The funniest thing is that the above dress code could be attached to a male or a female anchor. A few differences you may find are - where and how the fingers are thrust in and which fingers s/he finds most comfortable for making this style statement. Yes, it is called style statement! To cap it all, if you find a male anchor sporting a blouse-like shirt, or a girl leaving a belt of her skin in between the trousers and the top, don’t raise your eyebrows. They are here to stay, and you may expect much more attractions in these presenters themselves than what they are going to present in the shows and programmes.
Some female anchors look as if they have just been pulled out of their bathrooms. You cannot predict whether they were dressing up in there or undressing when this most heinous act took place. Some female anchors are found hosting in dresses that depict a different story altogether. Slits and sloppy side-shows happen to appear unpredictably from anywhere of their dress-scrapes, and the viewers are left with all their faculties of imagination and fancy.
The flip side: A cable TV operator charges you Rs 150 or 200 for a month, and he funnels in your interiors some 100 plus channels. Most of these work 24/7, all day long. That is five to seven rupees a day for 100 channels; five to seven paise per channel. With all the attractions and varieties of the programmes these channels offer, a cable TV subscriber is kept satisfied with visual treats of dress, body and its language of anchors of all denominations. What do you want more? Nothing? Then just sit glued to your TV and watch these signs of shining India! In the meantime, try to go to the nearest supermarket and buy the products these programmes promote during commercial breaks. Eat them sumptuously sitting in front of the TV itself, and again watch and go to hell or hospital.
Don’t we actually need a dress and a decency code for our anchors? Are they not able to influence people in a 24/7 grid? How can we protect our families from these atrocious sartorial insanities? Snap the cable or unsubscribe the connection? Or, let’s understand the obvious fact that our life had been much better, calmer and more comfortable (before the advent of these aerial entertainment extravaganzas) than it is today? The last proposition may help you make amends in the way you approach cable TV. You may find that “Yes, my family and I can do without it”. Just do without it. The sooner, the better.
Tail piece: I am very much conscious of the fact that this article blindly criticises all cable channels and programmes. I am aware that there are many informative, educative and entertaining channels aired from in-country and abroad as well, and these all have excellent media culture, which could be simply emulated. And if we could distinguish between what is good and what is bad for us, all these channels could be tapped through our cable network. But how many of our youngsters want such channels and programmes? How many of us are able to spare time for quality information and entertainment? We go for what we like, or what is made to be liked. So there is no room for such discussions. If you belong to the second category of people who are able to distinguish between what is good and bad, you may please excuse my one-sided writing.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
To be wanting is the thing...
The door opened to the face of an aged woman in rags. She was so worn and old that the words she lipped out sounded like an empty stomach. She was there not to go back unless she was treated the way she expected us to.
What can’t it be?
THE RINGING of the calling bell was knelling our pleasures out when we were glued to our senses on a Friday afternoon, after having had a sumptuous meal.
The bell has been there all these days, and it has never had our displeasure for having invited our attention to the fact that there was someone outside our world who needed something.
It was really annoying. The door opened to the face of an aged woman in rags. She was so worn and old that the words she lipped out sounded like an empty stomach.
She was there not to go back unless she was treated the way she expected us to. I didn’t know what was in her disposition. Anyway, she wanted to get something to ease her hunger.
We are undecided whether to give her something or to leave her in the lurch so that we could go on with our idle pleasures of the moment. Indecision on a little food!
Upon second look we found her taking out a few cans and small containers thinking that we had gone into take something for her, for it was mealtime, Friday, and above all there was a feeble and convincing request for food itself.
We had no other way. I even went to the extent of leaving the door closed so that she would go back.
She is taking some dishes and containers out.
‘What shall I do’, my girl asked.
Give her a few changes and let her go.
She wants something to eat.
Poor, she looks.
How can we say ‘no’ when someone asks for some food?
A pestering question it was.
When asked, give. It is a good philosophy.
We gave her a little food that had happened to remain, for we were unable to take it, a few ‘appams’ and a little pasty curry.
She took the same and went out of the way of our house.
We followed her to see whether she was taking it for someone back home or she was true to the words she had told us that she hadn’t had anything since that morning.
She kept the food and her belongings near the water tap and washed her hands and face, and sat down under the shade of that teakwood grove and started taking the ‘manna’.
In a few minutes she was done with the ‘devouring’ process, and again washed her hand, drank a few draughts of water and tidied up herself.
We had been watching. Surprisingly, before leaving us, she came back and thanked us for that ‘helping of food’ by drooping her head and cupping up her frail, cracked bands as if she was standing in worship in front of powerful deity.
That was the unkindest of all expressions.
“To the hungry food is god” I had read somewhere.
“Never hesitate to help others, when help is but food.”
“God is better of when he is food in the hands of the starving.”
And many such things flashed through my mind, and that lady left the scene like an apparition and disappearance.
She ached me. It pained me a little. Not that I was sorry to see her in such a despicable plight. But that she was giving me tremors of introspection. I did not show it. The more I kept it in the worse it came upon my very existence and me.
Oh, I am not going to see her anymore.
Nobody is going to know that I had a little hesitation in offering someone some food when asked for the same in beseeching terms.
Who is there in this little sphere to take statements and pass judgments on petty transgressions like these?
Many such foolish explanations and lame excuses kept on coming for long. I had no peace that day till I checked my luck out in the ‘gospel chest’, a set of ‘biblicals’ randomly placed in a matchbox like chest. I do check my luck everyday and on that particular traumatic day, I decided to check my luck in the afternoon too. I took the chest, closed my eyes, shuffled the gospel contents by skipping them through and stopped at one and took it out to read.
To my dismay, it read like this, “Never show the least reluctance to help the needy”
I have never been reluctant to help the needy, if the help needed was up to my frame and reach. Then why is this now? Then how come I hesitated for a while when this old woman stood begging, that too, for a loaf of bread? Why didn’t I take her in and treat her like a guest? Why did I give her the rest of the food, not the food of the time: meals? Why was that lady coming back and bowing her whole self in front of me? Was she telling me that it is human to be wanting?
I stopped at that last proposition. It kept on coming back for long. Is it not human to be wanting? Yes, it is human to be wanting. This time it was food, a simple enough thing.
Next time it could be a little more than…what not?
What can’t it be? Who can’t it be? Where can’t it be? It’s the next time that is going to decide what, who and where.
It isn’t what is going to be wanting. But “to be wanting” is the thing.
No matter, “you see, I had been helping the needy all my life, and this was the first time I went ignoring the cry of a needy.”
If one has to be going without wanting, I was made to think, one has to be giving without hesitating, forever and ever. Because, want is but… what not?
Something is wanting in me when I hesitate. I understand. This woman did not hesitate to thank us because she did not seem wanting anything in her, but a little food.
Now, I pray, may god help her and me alike when we both want something somewhere someday. Now it’s a refrain in me. Not that what is going to be wanting, but “To be wanting” is the thing.
What can’t it be?
THE RINGING of the calling bell was knelling our pleasures out when we were glued to our senses on a Friday afternoon, after having had a sumptuous meal.
The bell has been there all these days, and it has never had our displeasure for having invited our attention to the fact that there was someone outside our world who needed something.
It was really annoying. The door opened to the face of an aged woman in rags. She was so worn and old that the words she lipped out sounded like an empty stomach.
She was there not to go back unless she was treated the way she expected us to. I didn’t know what was in her disposition. Anyway, she wanted to get something to ease her hunger.
We are undecided whether to give her something or to leave her in the lurch so that we could go on with our idle pleasures of the moment. Indecision on a little food!
Upon second look we found her taking out a few cans and small containers thinking that we had gone into take something for her, for it was mealtime, Friday, and above all there was a feeble and convincing request for food itself.
We had no other way. I even went to the extent of leaving the door closed so that she would go back.
She is taking some dishes and containers out.
‘What shall I do’, my girl asked.
Give her a few changes and let her go.
She wants something to eat.
Poor, she looks.
How can we say ‘no’ when someone asks for some food?
A pestering question it was.
When asked, give. It is a good philosophy.
We gave her a little food that had happened to remain, for we were unable to take it, a few ‘appams’ and a little pasty curry.
She took the same and went out of the way of our house.
We followed her to see whether she was taking it for someone back home or she was true to the words she had told us that she hadn’t had anything since that morning.
She kept the food and her belongings near the water tap and washed her hands and face, and sat down under the shade of that teakwood grove and started taking the ‘manna’.
In a few minutes she was done with the ‘devouring’ process, and again washed her hand, drank a few draughts of water and tidied up herself.
We had been watching. Surprisingly, before leaving us, she came back and thanked us for that ‘helping of food’ by drooping her head and cupping up her frail, cracked bands as if she was standing in worship in front of powerful deity.
That was the unkindest of all expressions.
“To the hungry food is god” I had read somewhere.
“Never hesitate to help others, when help is but food.”
“God is better of when he is food in the hands of the starving.”
And many such things flashed through my mind, and that lady left the scene like an apparition and disappearance.
She ached me. It pained me a little. Not that I was sorry to see her in such a despicable plight. But that she was giving me tremors of introspection. I did not show it. The more I kept it in the worse it came upon my very existence and me.
Oh, I am not going to see her anymore.
Nobody is going to know that I had a little hesitation in offering someone some food when asked for the same in beseeching terms.
Who is there in this little sphere to take statements and pass judgments on petty transgressions like these?
Many such foolish explanations and lame excuses kept on coming for long. I had no peace that day till I checked my luck out in the ‘gospel chest’, a set of ‘biblicals’ randomly placed in a matchbox like chest. I do check my luck everyday and on that particular traumatic day, I decided to check my luck in the afternoon too. I took the chest, closed my eyes, shuffled the gospel contents by skipping them through and stopped at one and took it out to read.
To my dismay, it read like this, “Never show the least reluctance to help the needy”
I have never been reluctant to help the needy, if the help needed was up to my frame and reach. Then why is this now? Then how come I hesitated for a while when this old woman stood begging, that too, for a loaf of bread? Why didn’t I take her in and treat her like a guest? Why did I give her the rest of the food, not the food of the time: meals? Why was that lady coming back and bowing her whole self in front of me? Was she telling me that it is human to be wanting?
I stopped at that last proposition. It kept on coming back for long. Is it not human to be wanting? Yes, it is human to be wanting. This time it was food, a simple enough thing.
Next time it could be a little more than…what not?
What can’t it be? Who can’t it be? Where can’t it be? It’s the next time that is going to decide what, who and where.
It isn’t what is going to be wanting. But “to be wanting” is the thing.
No matter, “you see, I had been helping the needy all my life, and this was the first time I went ignoring the cry of a needy.”
If one has to be going without wanting, I was made to think, one has to be giving without hesitating, forever and ever. Because, want is but… what not?
Something is wanting in me when I hesitate. I understand. This woman did not hesitate to thank us because she did not seem wanting anything in her, but a little food.
Now, I pray, may god help her and me alike when we both want something somewhere someday. Now it’s a refrain in me. Not that what is going to be wanting, but “To be wanting” is the thing.
Our dining tables, duties and responsibilities
FOOD AND FAMILY life go together in all cultures. Down the ages, communities have evolved themselves more out of their own food cultures than out of anything else.
Lately, there has developed a great attitudinal shift in this connection, and present generation has evolved a new food culture. This new attitude has started costing our social and family values dearly, and the most visible impacts of this crazy consumption psychosis is not just the medical uncertainty we find at our five star hospitals, but it is the abysmal character and behavioural disorders we find in our new generation.
Our dining times of lore have silently given way to eating sprees at food courts and junk joints. We carry home alien dishes, hangout and savour sandwiches, French fries, McDonalds’ burgers, Kentucky Fried Chicken’s (KFC) vegetarian and non-vegetarian stuff, pizzas and those aerated cokes and colas coupled with our 24/7 working environment leave precious little to be expected of our new generation.
Since our society is not so generous to accommodate a junk culture for long, it is time we looked at the finer side of this change in food habits and its impact on our character and behaviour. How we prepare our food, the way we eat that food, the times we eat it and who we eat that food with etc have got much more to offer us by way of behaviour and character. This is a very rare process through which individuals groom themselves to the expectations of the family and society they belong to. See how that grooming exercise works:
A full-fledged kitchen is the laboratory that records and maintains the health indices of a given family.
All the ingredients that go into the making of a traditional dish are components of a course of medicine.
The hands, along with the mind and its mood, that prepare the dish leave a rare taste in it, and it is unique for every kitchen and the family it belongs to.
It is not the quantity that matters when we eat at our family dinner, rather it is the quality along with a tinge of love that matters.
Father, mother, sister, brother, some elders like grandparents or relatives, together with a few occasional guests would make every dining an exclusive experience.
When we eat food like this three times a day fairly unfailingly for quite sometime, we not only follow a balanced diet, but also we imbibe in our children a great sense of belonging, sharing, understanding, and above all a deeper sense of character and behaviour, peculiar to our family and the culture it belongs to.
It is this sense or the sensibility that we lose out when we go for an alien food culture. Besides the medical calamities our new generation comes to suffer from eventually, we lose out on our own ‘foodholds’, which took centuries to evolve. One day it would go extinct, and the coming generation would have to depend solely on a foreign food culture. Naturally, the new generation will come to have a character and behaviour alien to our native culture and family values, contrary to our duties and responsibilities.
If ever we could identify a single human activity that has caused abysmal fall in social, family, personal duties and responsibilities, it is this: Our fast disappearing family dining experience.
Therefore, there is urgent need for reinventing our ethnic food culture so as to inculcate in our new generation better signs of behaviour and character and respect for values that are indigenous to our culture and society.
Lately, there has developed a great attitudinal shift in this connection, and present generation has evolved a new food culture. This new attitude has started costing our social and family values dearly, and the most visible impacts of this crazy consumption psychosis is not just the medical uncertainty we find at our five star hospitals, but it is the abysmal character and behavioural disorders we find in our new generation.
Our dining times of lore have silently given way to eating sprees at food courts and junk joints. We carry home alien dishes, hangout and savour sandwiches, French fries, McDonalds’ burgers, Kentucky Fried Chicken’s (KFC) vegetarian and non-vegetarian stuff, pizzas and those aerated cokes and colas coupled with our 24/7 working environment leave precious little to be expected of our new generation.
Since our society is not so generous to accommodate a junk culture for long, it is time we looked at the finer side of this change in food habits and its impact on our character and behaviour. How we prepare our food, the way we eat that food, the times we eat it and who we eat that food with etc have got much more to offer us by way of behaviour and character. This is a very rare process through which individuals groom themselves to the expectations of the family and society they belong to. See how that grooming exercise works:
A full-fledged kitchen is the laboratory that records and maintains the health indices of a given family.
All the ingredients that go into the making of a traditional dish are components of a course of medicine.
The hands, along with the mind and its mood, that prepare the dish leave a rare taste in it, and it is unique for every kitchen and the family it belongs to.
It is not the quantity that matters when we eat at our family dinner, rather it is the quality along with a tinge of love that matters.
Father, mother, sister, brother, some elders like grandparents or relatives, together with a few occasional guests would make every dining an exclusive experience.
When we eat food like this three times a day fairly unfailingly for quite sometime, we not only follow a balanced diet, but also we imbibe in our children a great sense of belonging, sharing, understanding, and above all a deeper sense of character and behaviour, peculiar to our family and the culture it belongs to.
It is this sense or the sensibility that we lose out when we go for an alien food culture. Besides the medical calamities our new generation comes to suffer from eventually, we lose out on our own ‘foodholds’, which took centuries to evolve. One day it would go extinct, and the coming generation would have to depend solely on a foreign food culture. Naturally, the new generation will come to have a character and behaviour alien to our native culture and family values, contrary to our duties and responsibilities.
If ever we could identify a single human activity that has caused abysmal fall in social, family, personal duties and responsibilities, it is this: Our fast disappearing family dining experience.
Therefore, there is urgent need for reinventing our ethnic food culture so as to inculcate in our new generation better signs of behaviour and character and respect for values that are indigenous to our culture and society.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Salwars and Churidars at Kerala schools
FINALLY WISDOM prevailed over parochial sartorial insensitivities meted out against school teachers at schools in Kerala. The Kerala government has brought out a new order making churidars or salwar khamis, as acceptable dresses for female teachers. The dress code for female teachers has been a bone of contention for long, with many principals and headmistresses insisting on female teachers to be in sarees only. There have been many culture vultures that found it intimidating to see teachers in churidars, and they even dictated dress codes to teachers. They claimed that teachers command some respect and the saree they put on are synonymous with respect.
In this country, many females in excellent dresses, in all age groups and professions get molested in broad day light, the great number of them are being aggressed upon when they are on move in buses and trains and similar public transport. In such a scenario one’s dress code and the comfort he/she derives from it need to be in accordance with one’s profession and nature of work they do every day.
The leers and ogles females suffer from when they go out in sarees are sheer aggressions on their very modesty. So teachers need to have the freedom to be in dresses they find themselves comfortable in. Now teachers can heave a sigh of relief. This new freedom of dress leaves female teachers with a lot of conveniences, especially for those expectant mothers and for those who commute long distances on a daily basis. Being in a saree during monsoon is very uncomfortable.
The trauma women suffer when boarding, alighting and running after buses and trains cannot be empathised by men. They enjoy a kind of sartorial dictatorship no matter what profession they are in. We need a common dress code governed by convenience, not by culture police.
This new dress code is going to make student-teacher relation a little closer and the many school children would feel at home to see their teachers in churidars, salwars and khamis. When it comes to personal contacts, influences and confidence building, dress code has role to play. Now students, especially, female students can feel comfortable to find majority of teachers in churidars. Since the saree is given a universal acceptance, those so obsessed with the same can be in the same dress. But we cannot impose a dress code on teachers.
However, we may adopt an acceptable-to-all look and finish to the churidars and salwars. They need to be so decently slit and beautifully tailored that they will become models for their female wards too. In the long run our new generation would come to look decent in their dresses, and this decency would lead to better male-female relation, the basics of which are learnt from schools and campuses.
Teachers are so lucky that local self-government institutions are not given permission to look into the appropriateness of their new dress the same way they meddle with the school administration these days.
In this country, many females in excellent dresses, in all age groups and professions get molested in broad day light, the great number of them are being aggressed upon when they are on move in buses and trains and similar public transport. In such a scenario one’s dress code and the comfort he/she derives from it need to be in accordance with one’s profession and nature of work they do every day.
The leers and ogles females suffer from when they go out in sarees are sheer aggressions on their very modesty. So teachers need to have the freedom to be in dresses they find themselves comfortable in. Now teachers can heave a sigh of relief. This new freedom of dress leaves female teachers with a lot of conveniences, especially for those expectant mothers and for those who commute long distances on a daily basis. Being in a saree during monsoon is very uncomfortable.
The trauma women suffer when boarding, alighting and running after buses and trains cannot be empathised by men. They enjoy a kind of sartorial dictatorship no matter what profession they are in. We need a common dress code governed by convenience, not by culture police.
This new dress code is going to make student-teacher relation a little closer and the many school children would feel at home to see their teachers in churidars, salwars and khamis. When it comes to personal contacts, influences and confidence building, dress code has role to play. Now students, especially, female students can feel comfortable to find majority of teachers in churidars. Since the saree is given a universal acceptance, those so obsessed with the same can be in the same dress. But we cannot impose a dress code on teachers.
However, we may adopt an acceptable-to-all look and finish to the churidars and salwars. They need to be so decently slit and beautifully tailored that they will become models for their female wards too. In the long run our new generation would come to look decent in their dresses, and this decency would lead to better male-female relation, the basics of which are learnt from schools and campuses.
Teachers are so lucky that local self-government institutions are not given permission to look into the appropriateness of their new dress the same way they meddle with the school administration these days.
Female-friendly families urgently needed in India
IT IS, I repeat, it is the ‘weaker sex’ attitude our Indian parents keep towards their female children that makes our females weak throughout their life and when they need to be strong and defending, they simply fail and get carried away by the spoon-fed attitude in them that they are weak. It is idiotic to say that as per our culture, women are supposed to be this and that, and men are supposed to be enjoying certain privileges, and they can go to any lengths to get their things done. It is good if things are taking shape according to the need to the times.
See how a female child grows up in an Indian family. From the very day of the birth itself, the female child is looked down upon. Though not evidently, there is a feeling in all parents that the newborn is going to be a liability. Imagine that a baby boy follows after a couple of years. The shift of attitude the parents themselves towards their female child is enough to leave that child vulnerable to aggression, exploitation and deprivation. And the boy, who grows up with extra privileges, happens to develop asocial tendencies that make him feel that it is all right to keep girls and their modesty undermined.
However, the girls grow up with the constant feeding from their parents that girls are to be confined to certain limits and they have to be very careful when they are out, and they are so easily cheated and exploited, so it is better for them to be subservient as to be protected by their male counterparts. This psychological warfare is constantly carried out by their own parents, makes the female kids scared and subservient, and turns them into easy prey. And when a society gets filled with such boys and girls of two different makes and their parents, what we can expect is nothing less than what we get through our media on a daily basis: molestation, rape, eve teasing and otherwise undermining of the modesty of girls and even school kids as young as five year-old. This is deterioration and total collapse of conscience.
Where is the way out? It is in our homes. Today’s nuclear parents must take a different look at their female kids. They have to understand that it is their attitude towards their female kids that is going to make some changes in their lives. It is the parents’ vision, attitude and sensitivity towards their kids’ that determines whether their female kids are going to be accepted or aggressed. If parents could inculcate in their kids a kind of gender parity from the very day of birth itself, there will be changes in the long run.
Naturally, the kids come to hold a confidence that they are what they are and their position and value in the society are going to be determined by their own conscience. The very same conscience will be powerful to keep them in good stead. In such a scenario, we can expect our upcoming society to be a level-playing platform, shared for the mutual and harmonious coexistence of both the sexes, where there won’t be any rapes and molestations, aggressions and exploitations.
Is it too much to ask of our parents to be true to and respect each other and inculcate the respect in their kids too? Is it not the best of all those attributes that we normally associate with all parents? Unfortunately, our domestic ambience itself is a microcosm of a hostile society, where females get sidelined and discriminated against. Therefore, first let us do whatever we can to keep our homes female-friendly. Such families alone can expect a society to be so. Every society gets what it deserves. The same way, every female member of the family gets what the family thinks she should deserve.
It is all easier said than done. In order to facilitate this domestic overhaul, we need to do a few more things.
Firstly, we all should learn to live without cable TV. These channels are the worst media that educate, inform and entertain our kids in the most threatening ways. This ‘mediacation’ is constant and cancerous. Kids soak in whatever they watch on these channels and it becomes a part of their eventual mental disposition.
Secondly, it’s about sex - our villain. It is not a taboo. If parents do not know how to educate their kids about it and who in the world would do it for them? The father should educate his son/s and mother should take care of her daughter/s. Sex is a private affair. But sex education need not be so. It should not be something confidential.
Thirdly, dress code and physical appearance are to be considered. These should respect and compliment each other. Fashion is fine, but it is not to fuse the safer distance that exists between boys and girls. Delight comes from a distance. If the mother expects the world to ask her, “Which college are you studying in,” we cannot expect her daughter to be philosophical with her appearance.
Do we need to let our kids watch the vulgarities and disgusting perversions choreographed by our so-called chocolate heroes and bikini heroines in our commercial films? There are other films worth taking our children to. It will work wonders in the female-male relations.
Make your family meet, mingle, share and understand on a daily basis. Let there be a feeling that family is a friendly place, where alone better human relations flourish. So, there is urgent need for fe/male-friendly families.
See how a female child grows up in an Indian family. From the very day of the birth itself, the female child is looked down upon. Though not evidently, there is a feeling in all parents that the newborn is going to be a liability. Imagine that a baby boy follows after a couple of years. The shift of attitude the parents themselves towards their female child is enough to leave that child vulnerable to aggression, exploitation and deprivation. And the boy, who grows up with extra privileges, happens to develop asocial tendencies that make him feel that it is all right to keep girls and their modesty undermined.
However, the girls grow up with the constant feeding from their parents that girls are to be confined to certain limits and they have to be very careful when they are out, and they are so easily cheated and exploited, so it is better for them to be subservient as to be protected by their male counterparts. This psychological warfare is constantly carried out by their own parents, makes the female kids scared and subservient, and turns them into easy prey. And when a society gets filled with such boys and girls of two different makes and their parents, what we can expect is nothing less than what we get through our media on a daily basis: molestation, rape, eve teasing and otherwise undermining of the modesty of girls and even school kids as young as five year-old. This is deterioration and total collapse of conscience.
Where is the way out? It is in our homes. Today’s nuclear parents must take a different look at their female kids. They have to understand that it is their attitude towards their female kids that is going to make some changes in their lives. It is the parents’ vision, attitude and sensitivity towards their kids’ that determines whether their female kids are going to be accepted or aggressed. If parents could inculcate in their kids a kind of gender parity from the very day of birth itself, there will be changes in the long run.
Naturally, the kids come to hold a confidence that they are what they are and their position and value in the society are going to be determined by their own conscience. The very same conscience will be powerful to keep them in good stead. In such a scenario, we can expect our upcoming society to be a level-playing platform, shared for the mutual and harmonious coexistence of both the sexes, where there won’t be any rapes and molestations, aggressions and exploitations.
Is it too much to ask of our parents to be true to and respect each other and inculcate the respect in their kids too? Is it not the best of all those attributes that we normally associate with all parents? Unfortunately, our domestic ambience itself is a microcosm of a hostile society, where females get sidelined and discriminated against. Therefore, first let us do whatever we can to keep our homes female-friendly. Such families alone can expect a society to be so. Every society gets what it deserves. The same way, every female member of the family gets what the family thinks she should deserve.
It is all easier said than done. In order to facilitate this domestic overhaul, we need to do a few more things.
Firstly, we all should learn to live without cable TV. These channels are the worst media that educate, inform and entertain our kids in the most threatening ways. This ‘mediacation’ is constant and cancerous. Kids soak in whatever they watch on these channels and it becomes a part of their eventual mental disposition.
Secondly, it’s about sex - our villain. It is not a taboo. If parents do not know how to educate their kids about it and who in the world would do it for them? The father should educate his son/s and mother should take care of her daughter/s. Sex is a private affair. But sex education need not be so. It should not be something confidential.
Thirdly, dress code and physical appearance are to be considered. These should respect and compliment each other. Fashion is fine, but it is not to fuse the safer distance that exists between boys and girls. Delight comes from a distance. If the mother expects the world to ask her, “Which college are you studying in,” we cannot expect her daughter to be philosophical with her appearance.
Do we need to let our kids watch the vulgarities and disgusting perversions choreographed by our so-called chocolate heroes and bikini heroines in our commercial films? There are other films worth taking our children to. It will work wonders in the female-male relations.
Make your family meet, mingle, share and understand on a daily basis. Let there be a feeling that family is a friendly place, where alone better human relations flourish. So, there is urgent need for fe/male-friendly families.
A Daughter’s Dilemma!
IT IS for boys. Girls are not supposed to be playing such games. Girls don’t use such expressions! They have to be refined in their words. Come home dear before it gets dark. You cannot be out in the street after sundown. Wake up my dear and help me in the kitchen. Girls should not sleep for long. There is a heap of clothes, just make sure you wash. Let them finish with it. We will sit later dear, are you hungry now? You are not. Make all the beds first and do some dishwashing when you finish with it.
Getting big degrees is not meant for girls. They need to get married fast and start a new family. It has been six months since you got married! When are you going to give us that great ‘news’? We are so anxious to become grandparents. It is great to be a mom, dear. I gave birth to five children. It was not simple and is not for all.
Be careful dear, you are carrying a baby. You cannot walk and move so briskly. The baby may get hurt. Is it going to be a baby girl or boy, dear? A baby girl! But, I want a baby boy! What do you say? It’s a girl. How do you know that? Mother’s can tell. Are you sure or maybe you are confused. No, I am not confused, but the baby in me seems to be in a dilemma. I am sure it is a baby girl. No, it is a baby boy. Please stop it.
What if we go for a sex determination check? What for? We could have options dear. What do you mean by options? You can take it or leave it, dear, I mean, if you want a baby boy and you happen to have a baby girl in, you can opt it out, and go for a second innings. It may turn out to be a baby boy. Agreed? How dare you say that to me? Aren’t your parents anxious now? They want a boy. We will try again if the test goes negative.
I am not convinced. What if it is not going to be up to your wish the second time too? No problem, we can try again. Again! I get a premonition that I am going to give birth to a baby girl for sure. No way. Why not?
“My dilemma is whether I should bring her to this world or cede her right there. It is a daughter’s dilemma, and only daughters understand it, because it is very difficult to be living a daughter’s life.”
Did you say something dear? No honey! But I am thinking of…er…. Of what? Tell me. What if we go for a sex determination test? Are you serious? Yes, I am.
“That is the best thing I could do for my daughter. Let all daughters live in the minds of those who love them. They do not deserve physical existence anymore. This world is not for daughters. It is for sons, brothers, brothers-in-law, husbands, fathers and grandfathers.”
When are we meeting the doctor? Right-way?
“Make it fast. It is getting late. I have to save my daughter from this world at any cost.”
Getting big degrees is not meant for girls. They need to get married fast and start a new family. It has been six months since you got married! When are you going to give us that great ‘news’? We are so anxious to become grandparents. It is great to be a mom, dear. I gave birth to five children. It was not simple and is not for all.
Be careful dear, you are carrying a baby. You cannot walk and move so briskly. The baby may get hurt. Is it going to be a baby girl or boy, dear? A baby girl! But, I want a baby boy! What do you say? It’s a girl. How do you know that? Mother’s can tell. Are you sure or maybe you are confused. No, I am not confused, but the baby in me seems to be in a dilemma. I am sure it is a baby girl. No, it is a baby boy. Please stop it.
What if we go for a sex determination check? What for? We could have options dear. What do you mean by options? You can take it or leave it, dear, I mean, if you want a baby boy and you happen to have a baby girl in, you can opt it out, and go for a second innings. It may turn out to be a baby boy. Agreed? How dare you say that to me? Aren’t your parents anxious now? They want a boy. We will try again if the test goes negative.
I am not convinced. What if it is not going to be up to your wish the second time too? No problem, we can try again. Again! I get a premonition that I am going to give birth to a baby girl for sure. No way. Why not?
“My dilemma is whether I should bring her to this world or cede her right there. It is a daughter’s dilemma, and only daughters understand it, because it is very difficult to be living a daughter’s life.”
Did you say something dear? No honey! But I am thinking of…er…. Of what? Tell me. What if we go for a sex determination test? Are you serious? Yes, I am.
“That is the best thing I could do for my daughter. Let all daughters live in the minds of those who love them. They do not deserve physical existence anymore. This world is not for daughters. It is for sons, brothers, brothers-in-law, husbands, fathers and grandfathers.”
When are we meeting the doctor? Right-way?
“Make it fast. It is getting late. I have to save my daughter from this world at any cost.”
Empowering women: The Indian way
‘WOMEN EMPOWERMENT’ has become a cliché and sounds hollow if media reports on the plight of Indian women are anything to go by. Still our Indian women are patient and tolerant; they fight for their due in today’s social and economic milieu. How do we, in India, empower our womenfolk? The irreparable damage we inflicted on our women after independence was to brand them as kitchen and kid managers. They were that for nearly 50 years. By the time the country realised that it made no difference in terms of growth, it was too late and we conveniently coined a phrase to conceal that mistake. The phrase is ‘women empowerment’.
What have we done do empower our women?
We boast of democracy but are we ready to share electoral representation with women?
We talk of equality. How many of our women get to enjoy equality?
When it comes to social changes, we have no parallels; we have come a long way. But where do our women stand in spite of these changes?
We are inundated with opportunities and prospects. Do we share these with our women?
How many Indian women get to move out freely?
Getting married, begetting children and raising them to the satisfaction of all and sundry is no easy task. How many parents would like to have a girl child or educate a girl child, for that matter?
Women are free, we say. Then why they are shackled? Do we let our women say what they have got to say? Have we ever shown the decency to accept that it is women who make the world lively and life worth living?
India is known for its kind and hospitable people. Molesting and raping women, Indian or foreign, in broad daylight, are some of the strange ways in which Indians empower women.
Marriage and money are synonymous in India. The former is the means to the latter; in other words, it amounts to empowering women to be useful.
Our women have come a long way. We have a lot of them holding enviable positions like scientists, astronauts, diplomats, ambassadors, administrators, presidents and prime ministers. While making this hoary remark in the context of women empowerment, we simply ignore one thing - that our nation is more than 100-crore strong.
33 per cent representation for women in the House is a distant dream and the bill is gathering dust.
Provision of equal access to education and the right to deserving positions is easier said than done. Not many women are able to access the right education; nor are they able to claim deserving positions.
Advertisements, films, TV serials, reality shows, tourism centres, marriage markets, workplace, buses, rails and railway stations, lanes, homes, hotels and resorts, parlours and beauty pageants, board-rooms and office cabins, lifts and corridors, political circles, corporate honchos’ meets, etc, pose threat to women. And we empower our women on a daily basis!
On this Women’s Day at least, let us men shed our egos and hypocrisy and realise that there is nothing we need to do to empower women. Rather we let them live life the way we live our lives, viz, to the full. Empowerment is an external activity. What our women need is not empowerment; they need to be allowed to enjoy real power. Are we going to do it? No, I am afraid. He who knows the real power of women would never do it. So it is better to hypocritically brand them powerless or less powerful and keep them empowered ‘periodically’.
What have we done do empower our women?
We boast of democracy but are we ready to share electoral representation with women?
We talk of equality. How many of our women get to enjoy equality?
When it comes to social changes, we have no parallels; we have come a long way. But where do our women stand in spite of these changes?
We are inundated with opportunities and prospects. Do we share these with our women?
How many Indian women get to move out freely?
Getting married, begetting children and raising them to the satisfaction of all and sundry is no easy task. How many parents would like to have a girl child or educate a girl child, for that matter?
Women are free, we say. Then why they are shackled? Do we let our women say what they have got to say? Have we ever shown the decency to accept that it is women who make the world lively and life worth living?
India is known for its kind and hospitable people. Molesting and raping women, Indian or foreign, in broad daylight, are some of the strange ways in which Indians empower women.
Marriage and money are synonymous in India. The former is the means to the latter; in other words, it amounts to empowering women to be useful.
Our women have come a long way. We have a lot of them holding enviable positions like scientists, astronauts, diplomats, ambassadors, administrators, presidents and prime ministers. While making this hoary remark in the context of women empowerment, we simply ignore one thing - that our nation is more than 100-crore strong.
33 per cent representation for women in the House is a distant dream and the bill is gathering dust.
Provision of equal access to education and the right to deserving positions is easier said than done. Not many women are able to access the right education; nor are they able to claim deserving positions.
Advertisements, films, TV serials, reality shows, tourism centres, marriage markets, workplace, buses, rails and railway stations, lanes, homes, hotels and resorts, parlours and beauty pageants, board-rooms and office cabins, lifts and corridors, political circles, corporate honchos’ meets, etc, pose threat to women. And we empower our women on a daily basis!
On this Women’s Day at least, let us men shed our egos and hypocrisy and realise that there is nothing we need to do to empower women. Rather we let them live life the way we live our lives, viz, to the full. Empowerment is an external activity. What our women need is not empowerment; they need to be allowed to enjoy real power. Are we going to do it? No, I am afraid. He who knows the real power of women would never do it. So it is better to hypocritically brand them powerless or less powerful and keep them empowered ‘periodically’.
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